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THE  STORY  OF  THE  "WHITE  SLAVE  TRADE' 


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NORINE  LAW 


THE  SHAME  OF  A  GREAT  NATION 


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E.  NORINE  LAW. 


THE  SHAME  OF  A 
GREAT  NATION 

The  Story  of  the  ''White  Slave  Trade" 


BY 

E.  NORINE  LAW 


harrisburg,  pa. 

United  Evangelical  Publishing  House 

1909 


Send  all  orders  to  E.   N.  Law,  37  Hague  Ave.,  Detroit,  Mich. 


Copyright  1909 

BY 

E.  NORINE  LAW 


SRLF 

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PREFACE 


No  apology  is  needed  for  this  book.  We  are  living  in  peril- 
ous times.  This  great  nation  of  ours,  bought  with  the  price 
of  blood,  and  saved  again  by  the  same  sacrifice,  is  in  danger 
of  departing  from  the  principles  of  our  fathers. 

The  truths  we  write  about  will  be  told  in  a  very  humble 
manner  but  we  trust  the  people  will  read,  think  and  act, 
before  it  shall  be  too  late  to  stop  the  tide  of  immorality  and 
crime  that  bid  fair  to  sweep  us  to  destruction  unless  soon 
checked. 

It  is  a  warning,  a  plea  from  one  whose  heart  and  soul  burn 
with  a  desire  to  bind  up  the  broken-hearted  and  save  the 
lost  ones  from  eternal  death.  Let  every  reader  pray  that  we 
may  return  to  God  before  it  is  too  late.  Let  us  be  a  Nation 
whose  God  is  the  Lord:  else  we  cannot  claim  His  promises 
and  secure  His  everlasting  blessings. 

Yours  for  the  uplift  of  the  people, 

E.  Norine  Law. 


The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation 

CHAPTER  I. 


The  Strength  op  National  Life. 

In  his  first  message  to  the  United  States  Congress,  President 
Roosevelt  said:  "There  are  two  pillars  upon  which  every 
nation  must  rest,  namely,  Christianity  and  Education."  All 
good  people  agree  with  this  declaration,  and  many  of  us  are 
of  the  conviction  that  we  should  practice  it  in  our  govern- 
mental affairs.  God  must  be  the  ruler  of  our  temporal  affairs, 
if  we  are  to  have  Him  guide  us  in  the  eternal.  Jesus  Christ 
must  be  the  Saviour  of  the  state  as  well  as  of  the  individual, 
or  there  is  no  authority  for  righteousness  or  deliverance  from 
evils  which  afflict  the  people  and  take  them  to  physical,  mental 
and  moral  decay. 

One-half  of  the  people  cannot  allow  the  other  half  to 
remain  in  ignorance,  and  not  be  held  back  by  this  hindering 
influence.  If  one-half  the  Nation  is  left  in  ignorance,  it  will 
hang  like  a  millstone  of  destruction  around  the  necks  of  those 
who  strive  for  peace  and  safety. 

The  same  principle  holds  good  in  a  moral  sense.  If  one- 
half  the  people  live  in  vice  and  immorality,  increasing  the 
population  with  offspring  possessed  of  the  same  low  standard 
of  purity,  the  whole  nation  will  become  morally  diseased,  and 
degeneracy  must  follow  as  an  unchangeable  reasult. 

It  is  not  the  industrial  value,  the  commercial  power,  or 


10  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

military  strength  that  really  saves  and  keeps  the  people  from 
harm  and  brings  success,  but  the  honesty,  piety  and  virtue 
of  her  people. 

Immorality  not  only  clouds  and  destroys  the  intellect,  It 
brings  physical  disease  and  decay,  as  well  as  spiritual  death. 

The  conditions  of  social  vice  and  sexual  impurity  in  exist- 
ence to-day  in  the  United  States  are  horrible,  pitiable  and 
alarming.  We  must  try  to  cause  an  arrest  of  thought  and 
teach  a  higher  grade  of  ideals  or  no  one  can  foresee  what  the 
awful  results  will  be.  Indeed,  the  sickening  tales  of  impurity 
and  sexual  vice  that  can  be  told  are  enough  to  frighten  every 
person  really  interested  in  saving  the  people  from  destruction. 
Not  only  the  present  but  the  future  welfare  of  our  people 
are  at  stake. 

We  must  begin  to  "cry  aloud  and  spare  not."  The 
tendency  of  the  people  always  has  been  to  refuse  to  be 
alarmed  until  the  danger  is  at  our  doors.  To  allow  the  enemy 
to  go  unchecked  until  it  is  ready  to  swallow  us  up.  We 
tolerate  wrong  and  become  profit-sharing  partners  and  legal 
protectors  of  crime  and  then  shudder  when  God  lays  His 
hand  upon  us  and  says,  "Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no 
farther,"  and  demands  compensation  to  the  injured,  robbed 
and  murdered  victims  of  the  crime  we  have  encouraged. 

The  Government  that  promised  we  should  all  have  an  equal 
chance  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  undertakes 
to  gain  revenue  by  selling  to  an  unprincipled  class  of  people 
the  special  privilege  of  looting  the  homes  and  lives  of  the  inno- 
cent as  well  as  of  the  willing  victims  of  sin ;  forgetting  that  in 
the  Holy  Word  is  written  ' '  woe  unto  them  that  take  reward  to 
slay  the  innocent  and  just  person." 

"Woe  unto  them  that  buildeth  a  town  with  blood  and 
establisheth  a  city  by  iniquity." 


The  Strength  of  National  Life.  11 

1 '  Woe  unto  them  that  justify  the  wicked  for  reward !  Woe 
unto  him  that  giveth  his  neighbor  drink." 

Perhaps  they  have  not  considered  well  these  words  of  1  Cor. 
8th  chapter:  "But  take  heed,  lest  by  any  means  this  liberty 
of  yours  becomes  a  stumbling-block  to  them  that  are  weak. 

"For  if  any  man  see  thee  which  hast  knowledge  (the  man  of 
influence)  sit  at  meat  in  the  idol's  temple  (do  those  things 
which  are  wrong  and  forbidden),  shall  not  the  conscience  of 
him  which  is  weak  (the  one  not  so  strong  and  able  to  resist) 
be  emboldened  to  eat  those  things  which  are  offered  in  sacri- 
fice unto  idols;  and  through  thy  knowledge  (your  influence, 
teaching  and  example)  shall  the  weak  brother  perish  for 
whom  Christ  died.  But  when  ye  sin  so  against  the  brethren 
and  wound  their  weak  conscience  (cause  them  to  go  astray), 
ye  sin  against  Christ." 

"Wherefore,  if  meat  make  my  brother  to  offend,  I  will  eat 
no  flesh  while  the  world  standeth,  lest  I  make  my  brother  to 
offend ; ' '  which,  being  interpreted  means  that  if  anything  we 
are  doing,  even  though  we  may  be  able  to  keep  self-control 
all  our  lives  will  cause  us  to  put  a  stumbling-block  in  our 
weaker  brother's  way,  whereby  he  will  commit  sin  and  go  to 
ruin  and  death,  we  are  expected,  for  the  sake  of  the  weaker 
brother  to  deny  ourselves  the  indulgence. 

We  must  remember  that  it  makes  a  great  difference  as  to 
how  we  are  born  and  brought  up  in  life.  Some  of  us  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  born  of  Christian  parents,  who  from  the 
time  of  our  conception,  kept  us  surrounded  with  right 
thoughts  and  teaching,  who  trained  us  in  the  way  we 
should  go  and  kept  us  living  in  an  atmosphere  of  Christian 
influence  and  pure  teaching.  We  came  from  clean  bodies, 
pure  souls,  and  were  not  allowed  to  "just  grow  up"  like 
Topsy,  in  the  wilds  of  the  street  and  vice  of  the  alley. 


12  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Compare  these  conditions  with  the  lives  of  millions  of  chil- 
dren born  every  year  of  diseased  bodies,  depraved  habits, 
dwarfed  intellects.  They  see  nothing  but  filth.  They  hear 
nothing  but  oaths  and  the  vilest  of  language.  They  play 
around  doors  that  look  into  saloons  and  brothels.  The  drunk- 
ard and  harlot  are  in  the  majority  of  the  people  they  see, 
until  they  become  old  enough  to  push  out  into  the  world,  they 
do  not  know  that  there  is  a  spot  different  from  that  where 
they  have  lived. 

If  we  are  fair-minded  in  our  decisions,  we  cannot  help  but 
know  those  born  under  these  terrible  conditions  of  impurity 
cannot  be  well  equipped  for  the  battles  of  life.  They  will  not 
have  the  same  physical  and  mental  strength  to  resist  the  evil. 
They  will  not  have  the  same  mental  power  to  define  right  and 
wrong. 

For  this  reason  God  said  ''The  strong  are  to  help  bear  the 
infirmities  of  the  weak,"  and  made  us  "Our  brother's 
keeper." 

It  is  certainly  our  duty  to  protect  the  weak  against  the 
strong.  To  abstain  from  things  that  to  us  might  not  work 
any  harm,  for  the  sake  of  helping  others  to  abstain  who  could 
not  practice  the  same  self-control,  and  would,  therefore,  be 
property  and  vested  rights.  "We  are  all  entitled  to  the  chance 
to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  that  our  fore- 
fathers bought  for  us  with  their  sacrifice  and  blood,  whether 
we  be  a  majority  or  minority.  A  government  fails  in  her 
mission  entirely  and  violates  her  agreement,  if  she  allows  the 
majority  to  rob  and  oppress  the  minority.  One  of  the  most 
important  purposes  of  government  is  to  protect  the  minority, 
if  necessary,  from  the  crimes  of  the  majority. 

There  are  some  of  us  who  still  cling  to  our  first  principles, 
and  are  determined,  with  the  help  of  God,  to  restore  to  the 


The  Strength  of  National  Life.  13 

people  that  which  has  been  stolen  by  corrupt,  thieving,  graft- 
ing politicians  in  the  name  of  the  Government. 

We  are  fully  aware  of  the  fact  that  many  will  resent  the 
statement  that  we  are  the  worst  fooled  people  on  earth  to-day. 
We  talk  about  being  a  "government  of  the  people,  for  the 
people  and  by  the  people, ' '  when  the  facts  prove  we  are  a  gov- 
ernment of  the  politicians,  for  the  politicians,  by  the  poli- 
ticians, and  they  are  a  government  of  the  trusts,  for  the 
trusts,  and  by  the  trusts.  No  wonder  the  crack  in  old  Liberty 
Bell  continues  to  widen  and  fears  are  entertained  for  its 
being  able  to  hold  together.  Call  it  anarchy,  treason,  or 
whatever  you  wish.  It  is  true.  Men  used  to  be  sent  to  Con- 
gress and  the  Legislature  because  they  had  brains  and  virtue. 
Now  they  can  go  if  they  have  money  enough  with  which  to 
buy  their  way,  and  are  known  to  be  easy  tools  for  the  un- 
principled men  to  handle  who  care  for  nothing  but  money 
and  power;  and  who  are  ready  to  sell  us  out  body  and  soul. 
They  will  walk  over  broken  hearts,  sobbing  women  and  chil- 
dren, robbed  of  home,  husband,  father  and  son,  to  accomplish 
their  purpose  and  secure  the  enactment  of  laws  that  will  give 
them  a  legal  right  to  prey  upon  us  like  vultures,  for  their  own 
personal  profit. 

The  most  unjust  and  horrible  thing  of  all  is,  that  the  inno- 
cent, helpless  children,  who  are  brought  into  this  world  by 
no  will  or  petition  of  their  own,  suffer  most  of  all. 

"How  long!     How  long,  O,  cruel  Nation, 

Will  you  seek  to  move  the  world  on  a  child 's  heart, 
And  crush  beneath  your  feet  its  palpitation; 

And  stride  onward  to  your  goal  amid  its  mart. 
But  that  blood  splasheth  upward,  O,  Gold  heaper, 

And  its  purple  shows  your  path. 
For  a  child's  moan  in  the  silence  curses  deeper 

That  a  strong  man's  in  its  wrath." 


CHAPTEE  II. 


The  Words  op  Great  Men. 

George  Washington,  in  his  inaugural  address,  said:  "What- 
ever measure  have  a  tendency  to  dissolve  the  Union,  or  con- 
tribute to  violate  or  lesson  sovereign  authority,  ought  to  be 
considered  as  hostile  to  the  Liberty  and  Independence  of 
America,  and  the  authors  of  them  treated  accordingly. 

Unless  we  can  be  enabled  by  the  concurrence  of  the  states 
to  participate  of  the  fruits  of  the  revolution,  or  enjoy  the 
essential  benefits  of  civil  society,  under  a  form  of  government 
so  free  and  uncorrupted,  so  happily  guarded  against  the 
danger  of  oppression,  it  will  be  a  subject  for  regret  that 
so  much  blood  has  been  shed,  and  so  much  treasure  lavished 
for  no  purpose.  That  so  much  suffering  has  been  encountered 
without  compensation ;  and  so  many  sacrifices  have  been  made 
in  vain. 

Where  is  the  man  to  be  found  who  wishes  to  remain  indebted 
for  the  defense  of  his  own  person  and  property  at  the  exer- 
tions, the  bravery,  the  blood  of  others,  without  one  generous 
effort  to  pay  the  debt  of  honor  and  gratitude. 

In  what  part  of  the  continent  shall  we  find  any  man,  or 
body  of  men  who  would  not  blush  to  stand  up  and  pro- 
pose measures  purposely  calculated  to  rob  his  fellow  of  his 
due ;  the  soldier  of  his  stipend  ?  Were  it  possible  that  such  a 
flagrant  instance  of  injustice  could  ever  happen,  would  it 
not  excite  the  general  indignation  and  tend  to  bring  down 
uopn  the  authors  of  such  measures  the  aggravated  vengeance 
of  Heaven?" 

14 


The  Words  of  Great  Men.  15 

There  is  no  denying  the  fact  that  we  are  living  in  the 
shameful  time  of  just  such  measures. 

There -have  been  many  measures  enacted  during  the  past 
twenty-five  years  which  "lessen  sovereign  authority."  Meas- 
ures which  were  intended  to  rob  the  people  of  liberty  and 
independence.  There  is  no  liberty  of  speech  and  freedom 
of  ballot  any  more.  You  may  talk,  if  you  will  talk  to  suit 
the  controlling  politicians.  You  may  vote  if  you  will  march 
up  to  the  tune  of  the  party  lash ;  but  if  not,  you  are  told  you 
will  lose  your  job  and  be  boycotted  in  business. 

The  country  to-day  is  full  of  "Penroses"  and  "Cannons," 
liquor  dealers,  bums,  criminals  and  political  traders,  who  are 
not  only  willing  but  glad  to  be  indebted  for  the  defense  of 
their  person  and  prosperity,  to  the  exertions,  expense,  bravery 
and,  if  necessary,  the  blood  of  others. 

They  not  only  fail  to  make  any  effort  to  pay  back  the  debt, 
but  they  continue  to  plunder  and  oppress  with  the  tyranny 
of  a  Czar  of  a  heathen  people. 

Without  a  tinge  or  a  blush  of  shame,  they  propose  measures, 
(and  see  to  it  that  they  are  put  through),  which  are  purposely 
calculated  to  rob  their  fellows  of  their  due.  It  ought  to 
excite  the  general  indignation  of  the  people  and  bring  down 
upon  these  political  hawks  the  vengeance  of  the  people.  But 
pity  is,  'tis  true,  the  people  seem  to  love  to  have  it  so. 

God  may  not  always  choose  to  have  it  so.  The  cries  of  the 
oppressed  are  going  up  to  the  throne  of  God,  and  who  knows 
but  that  He  shall  come,  unexpectedly  and  terribly  one  of 
these  days,  as  He  has  come  to  nations  and  individuals  in 
other  times. 

One  of  our  rich  men  says  he  is  going  to  devote  his  money 
and  time  to  avert  a  revolution.  It  is  not  fanatical  to  say 
that  the  spirit  of  discontent  and  resentment  is  on  the  increase, 


16  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

and  unless  a  peaceable  way  can  be  found  soon  to  right  some 
of  these  wrongs,  more  serious  results  may  follow. 

The  conditions  of  oppression  to-day  are  equal  to  those 
which  caused  our  fathers  to  demand  justice.  Whether  we 
will  demand  the  yoke  to  be  lifted,  or  allow  it  to  go  on  until  the 
wound  will  never  heal,  is  a  question  the  people  must  soon  de- 
cide. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  the  greatest  President  this  country  has 
ever  known,  said  in  his  inaugural  address,  "If  by  the  mere 
force  of  numbers  a  majority  should  deprive  a  minority  of 
any  clearly  written  constitutional  right,  it  might,  in  a  moral 
sense,  justify  revolution.  It  certainly  would  if  such  right 
were  a  vital  one." 

This  country,  with  its  institutions,  belongs  to  the  people 
who  inhabit  it.     (We  might  add,  who  pay  the  bills.) 

You  have  no  oath  in  heaven  to  destroy  the  Government, 
while  I  have  a  most  solemn  one  to  preserve  and  defend  it. 

' '  Woe  unto  the  world  because  of  offenses ;  for  it  must  needs 
be  that  offenses  come,  but  woe  unto  that  man  by  whom  the 
offense  cometh." 

If  we  shall  suppose  that  American  slavery  is  one  of  those 
offenses  which  in  the  Providence  of  God  must  needs  have 
come,  but  which,  having  continued  through  His  appointed 
time,  He  now  wills  to  remove,  and  that  He  gives  to  bofh  North 
and  South  this  terrible  war  as  the  woe  due  them  by  whom 
the  offense  cometh,  shall  we  deem  them  any  departure  from 
those  divine  attributes  which  the  believers  in  a  living  God 
always  ascribe  to  Him? 

Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we  pray  that  this  mighty 
scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass  away.  If  God  wills  that  it 
continues,  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by  the  bondsman's  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk,  and 


The  Words  of  Great  Men.  17 

until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  by  the  lash  shall  be  paid 
back  with  blood  drawn  by  the  sword,  yet  shall  we  still  say 
that  God  is  merciful  and  just,  and  righteous  altogether.  It 
is  well  for  us  to  carefully  consider  these  unchangeable  rules 
of  God  of  the  universe,  for  He  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day 
and  forever;  and  "what  is  written,  is  written." 

The  money  Judas  took  for  selling  our  Lord  into  the  hands 
of  His  enemies,  was  no  more  blood  money  than  that  which 
is  derived  in  revenue  from  the  liquor  business,  and  other 
business  deals  with  unprincipled  men  whereby  the  people 
are  robbed  by  unjust  demands  of  taxation. 

If  it  be  true  that  God  hears  the  widow's  cry,  the  sob  of 
the  children  tortured,  robbed  and  killed  by  the  merciless  greed 
of  dwarfed,  miserly  men,  and  a  Nation  that  sells  them  into 
bondage,  and  leaves  them  to  be  preyed  upon  by  these  vultures 
in  human  form,  then  it  must  be  that  some  day  He  will  come 
in  His  wrath  to  drive  the  money  changers  out  of  the  temple 
of  the  world,  and  set  the  captives  of  their  greed  and  avarice 
free. 

We  shudder  sometimes  when  we  think  of  how  God  may  de- 
mand that  we  pay  back  all  the  money  gained  in  revenue 
from  the  liquor  traffic,  every  dollar  of  it  representing  sorrow, 
misery  and  woe.  Desolate,  destitute  homes,  broken  hearts 
and  all  the  unspeakable  horrors  that  follow  in  the  track  of 
the  serpent  of  the  ' '  still. ' '  We  wonder  sometimes  how  all  the 
tears  of  the  broken-hearted  women  and  children  are  to  be 
paid  back.  If  it  be  by  some  terrible  scourge,  or  a  visitation 
of  His  wrath,  that  shall  sweep  away  every  dollar  earned 
by  the  Government  by  this  traffic  in  the  bodies  and 
souls  of  her  enslaved  people ;  if  it  pleases  God  to  demand  that 
all  the  tears  shed  by  the  innocent  and  helpless  victims  shall 
be  paid  back  by  the  blood  of  the  dear  ones  of  those  who  made 


18  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

it  possible  for  this  most  horrible  of  all  slave  trades  to  exist ; 
yet  we  will  turn  our  faces  toward  Heaven  and  say,  "God  is 
merciful  and  just  and  righteous  altogether.'' 

It  will  be  our  fault  and  ours  only,  if  some  terrible  judgment 
must  be  sent  upon  us  to  make  us  see  that  this  oppression 
has  lived  beyond  God's  time  of  endurance. 

These  convictions  are  not  the  result  of  the  wild  hallucina- 
tions of  a  fanatical  mind,  but  upon  the  written  word  of  God. 
Let  us  not  refuse  to  believe  His  word  and  rush  on  to  sure 
destruction. 


CHAPTER  III. 


Inconsistency  of  the  Government. 

William  E.  Gladstone,  that  great  English  statesman,  said: 
"  It  is  the  duty  of  every  government  to  make  it  as  easy  as  pos- 
sible for  her  people  to  do  right  and  as  difficult  a  spossible 
for  them  to  do  wrong." 

Certainly  no  other  policy  is  becoming  to  a  nation  pretend- 
ing to  be  civilized  and  Christianized. 

Under  the  present  system  of  licensing  the  liquor  traffic,  it 
makes  it  as  easy  as  possible  for  men  to  do  wrong  and  as  diffi- 
cult as  possible  for  them  to  do  right. 

The  evil  is  encouraged  and  strengthened  instead  of  being 
checked  and  weakened.  Men  are  taught  that  it  is  a  necessary 
evil ;  a  desirable  industry ;  a  sort  of  a  respectable  indulgence. 
Every  enticement  that  can  be  thought  of,  every  trick  that 
can  be  planned,  every  trap  that  can  be  set,  is  used  by  these 
unprincipled  men  of  the  liquor  trade,  to  draw  the  men  into 
their  dens  of  iniquity  to  spend  their  hard-earned  money 
for  that  which  destroys  soul  and  body,  ruins  reputation  and 
character  and  scatters  home  comforts  and  blessings.  ''They 
set  traps,  they  catch  men."  The  saloon  is  the  mightiest 
weapon  the  devil  has  for  beating  souls  into  his  infernal 
kingdom.  Yet,  good  men  believe  in  it,  and  vote  for  it,  not 
realizing  that  by  so  doing  they  become  partakers  of  its  fruits. 
They  forget  that  surely  God  will  hold  them  responsible  for  its 
crimes.  The  liquor  traffic  is  not  the  only  peril  of  this  Nation, 
but  it  is  not  putting  it  too  strong  to  say  it  is  the  greatest  evil  in 

19 


20  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

our  midst,  the  one  deserving  above  all  others  our  first  attention 
and  best  endeavors. 

The  minute  the  saloon  goes  down,  that  instant  many  other 
dens  of  vice  will  cease  to  exist,  for  there  are  many  of  these 
entirely  dependent  on  the  saloon  for  their  life  and  trade. 
When  the  saloon  problem  is  solved,  then,  and  not  until  that 
time,  will  a  large  number  of  other  vexing  questions  be  settled. 
We  are  more  and  more  astonished  at  the  discoveries  we  make 
along  this  line  when,  with  an  unprejudiced  mind  we  search 
for  the  truth. 

We  do  not  say  that  all  wrong  would  be  made  right  if  the 
liquor  traffic  were  abolished ;  but  we  do  know  that  the  people 
would  be  amazed  at  the  decrease  of  woe,  misery  and  crime 
which  this  evil  produces. 

It  is  an  oft-repeated  statement  that  ought  to  be  told  again, 
that  official  reports  prove  that  two-thirds  of  the  inmates  of 
penal  institutions  and  almshouses  are  there,  directly  or  in- 
directly, through  drink. 

For  twenty-eight  years  the  writer  has  been  traveling  all 
over  the  United  States  and  in  other  countries.  She  always 
visits  the  prisons  and  jails,  reform  schools  and  almshouses, 
homes  for  the  feeble-minded  and  other  dependents.  There 
has  never  been  a  solitary  exception  to  the  rule,  that  drink, 
directly  or  indirectly,  sent  the  victims  to  these  institutions, 
the  expense  of  which  is  met  by  the  taxpayers,  who  are  so 
deluded  as  to  believe  that  the  liquor  traffic  is  a  financial  benefit 
to  the  taxpayer.  Facts  prove  continually  that  the  saloon  is 
not  the  tax  saver,  but  the  tax  maker.  If  the  expense  charged 
up  to  the  people  for  the  maintenance  of  all  these  houses  of 
refuge  and  punishment  for  the  victims  of  the  saloon  were  to 
be  cut  out,  it  would  take  away  an  avalanche  of  taxation.  No 
one  can  disprove  this  statement,  and  yet  men  go  blindly  on 


Inconsistency  of  the  Government.  21 

believing  the  liquor  business  to  be  a  financial  benefit  and 
gasp  for  breath  when  they  say,  "Yes,  but  if  you  abolish  the 
liquor  business,  what  will  we  do  for  revenue  ? ' ' 

The  Government  goes  on  protecting  bonded  warehouses,  and 
pays  heavily  for  the  privilege. 

Truly  we  need  to  pray,  ' '  Open  thou  our  eyes  that  we  may 
see,  and  our  ears  that  we  may  hear,  and  our  minds,  that  we 
may  heed." 

The  Government  thinks  she  is  deriving  revenue  from  the 
business,  when  the  truth  is,  she  is  paying  vast  sums  of  money 
that  ought  to  go  to  legitimate  sources,  to  protect  an  industry 
that  long  ago  should  have  been  denounced  and  prohibited 
as  a  "Legalized  Outlaw." 

She  gets  one  dollar  for  granting  a  special  privilege  for  a 
criminal  business,  then  pays  twenty  to  take  care  of  the 
wrecks  of  its  trade,  and  teaches  her  people  to  believe  that 
her  greatest  source  of  income  would  be  taken  away  if  the  evil 
were  abolished. 

Never  in  the  history  of  the  world  were  a  people  more  de- 
ceived by  cunning  teachings  of  evil  doers. 

Although  the  Government  promised  by  her  declaration  of 
principles  to  do  her  best  to  remove  evil  from  the  pathway 
of  the  people,  she  not  only  permits  and  protects  it,  but  hinders 
states  and  municipalities  from  exercising  their  vested  rights 
to  destroy  the  monster  within  their  own  boundaries. 

Under  the  head  of  "How  the  United  States  Government 
Protects  the  Liquor  Traffic,"  Mr.  Finley  C.  Hendrickson  says: 

' '  No  Prohibition  State  or  '  dry '  area  can  project  its  govern- 
mental policy  upon  license  territory.  But  license  states  and 
'wet'  territory  are  permitted,  through  the  powers  delegated 
to  the  Federal  Government,  to  annul  the  laws  of  the  Prohi- 


22  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

bition  States  and  'dry'  areas.  This  is  done  in  three  direct 
ways: 

First. — By  Congress  permitting  the  drink  traffic  the  rights 
of  inter-state  commerce  to  break  down  the  prohibitory  law 
through  inter-state  liquor  shipments.  As  the  law  and  practice 
now  stand,  all  of  the  forty -six  states  might  adopt  state  pro- 
hibitory laws,  but  the  liquor  interests,  concentrating  in  the 
District  of  Columbia  alone,  for  instance,  could  virtually  annul 
the  internal  policies  of  all  the  states  through  the  shipment  of 
inter-state  liquors  to  every  point  in  them,  limited  only  in 
this  nullification  policy  by  the  cost  of  transportation. 

Second. — By  permitting  traffic,  outlawed  in  the  major  por- 
tion of  the  area  of  the  states,  unlimited  mail  facilities  through 
which  the  liquor  interests  direct  the  lawless  how  to  evade  or 
defy  the  laws  of  the  respective  states. 

Third. — By  the  rule  of  the  Treasury  Department,  which 
sells  Federal  liquor  licenses  to  all  applicants  regardless  of 
the  fact  that  many  thousands  of  these  applicants  are  tramp- 
ling state  liquor  laws  under  foot  in  both  license  and  'dry' 
territory.  This  bad  practice  is  buttressed  by  the  rule  of  the 
Treasury  Department  that  internal  revenue  collectors,  hav- 
ing in  their  possession  the  best  evidence  of  lawless  intent, 
must  not  testify  in  the  state  courts  against  these  lawbreakers. 


Nothing  could  now  add  greater  lustre  to  constitutional 
freedom,  of  which  this  Republic  is  the  leading  exponent,  than 
to  demonstrate  to  both  its  friends  and  foes  that  the  American 
people  are  capable  of  suppressing  in  these  states,  through  the 
orderly  functions  of  government,  this  internal  evil  of  the 
drink  traffic.  To  deny  this  right  and  power  to  civil  liberty 
is  but  to  strengthen  the  apologists  of  monarchical  government. 


Inconsistency  of  the  Government.  23 

who  still  hope  to  discover  some  internal  weakness  in  free 

institutions. 

•        •        • 

The  movement  against  the  drink  traffic  in  America  is  now 
pronounced  in  politieis,  in  ethics  and  industrialism.  While 
other  nations  are  moving  against  it,  the  agitation  in  the 
United  States  has  reached  such  a  point  as  properly  characterizes 
It  as  an  American  movement.  In  politics,  in  ethics,  industrial- 
ism, education,  medical  science,  inventions  and  throughout 
every  avenue  of  American  activity  the  protest  against  the 
drink  traffic  has  gone  up.  The  American  people  have  come 
to  realize  that  they  do  not  lack  stimulation  in  all  the  glorious 
history  of  the  past  and  the  splendid  prospect  which  lies 
before.  They  are  realizing  also  that  since  it  is  necessary  to 
oppose  the  drink  traffic  in  the  avenues  of  ethics,  education, 
industry,  economics  and  finance,  it  is  all  the  more  necessary 
to  oppose  it  politically.  Success  in  this  movement  therefore 
means  an  American  victory,  and  failure  would  be  declared 
an  American  defeat.  The  outcome  will  make  new  comparisons 
between  the  relative  merits  of  free  institutions  and  mon- 
archical government. 

Animated  by  the  wider  prospect  as  well  as  the  duty  which 
lies  at  hand,  we  renew  our  political  task,  declaring  now,  as 
heretofore,  that  minor  political  considerations,  based  only  on 
short-lived  expediency,  divorced  from  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  right  and  justice,  shall  not  draw  us  from  our  political 
course.  Our  devotion  to  the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  which  is 
but  the  cause  of  humanity,  will  continue  to  be  our  first  po- 
litical consideration. ' ' 

We  are  supposed  to  have  a  system  of  state  rights  and  muni- 
cipal control,  but  it  is  entirely  nullified  and  utterly  destroyed, 
so  far  as  the  liquor  traffic  is  concerned. 


24  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

For  many  years  the  people  opposed  to  this  murdering  and 
thieving  business  have  been  trying  to  get  a  law  through  Con- 
gress to  prevent  liquor  being  shipped  into  Prohibition  States 
and  towns,  by  giving  the  state  absolute  control  in  the  matter 
and  so  fixing  the  law  that  they  may  have  power  to  confiscate 
the  illicit  goods,  and  treat  the  offenders  as  any  other  criminal. 

Thus  far  all  petitions  and  pleadings  have  failed.  It  is  not 
at  all  difficult  to  guess  at  the  reason  why  this  very  great 
demand  should  be  granted.  Some  of  the  Congressmen  are 
openly  in  the  liquor  business,  while  many  others  hold  large 
stock  interests.  Men  of  reason  and  average  intelligence  can 
readily  see  that  the  ballot  must  be  applied  to  send  a  different 
class  of  men  to  "Washington,  if  we  hope  to  correct  this  gross 
injustice,  and  the  determination  of  the  Government  to  inter- 
fere with  State  rights. 

It  is  just  such  unfair,  unreasonable,  oppressive  legislation 
that  kindles  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  a  spirit  of  revolution. 
The  people  will  not  always  submit  to  this  crushing,  unjust 
treatment.  "We  need  not  have  a  revolution  of  blood.  The 
only  knife  or  bayonet  that  need  be  used  is  the  ballot,  applied 
with  cannon  power  to  the  politicians  who  prefer  to  stand 
for  evil  rather  than  good,  and  rob  the  people  of  their  rights, 
rather  than  to  protect  them  from  the  pirates  who  steal  in  upon 
them  to  plunder  their  peaceful  homes. 

The  position  of  the  Government  in  this  matter  is  the  great- 
est hindrance  of  all  to  the  better  enforcement  of  the  pro- 
hibitory laws  of  states  and  municipalities. 

To  grant  to  the  states  and  cities  the  right  to  vote  out  an 
evil,  yet  retain  the  power  as  a  nation  to  give  federal  licenses 
for  it  to  continue,  is  like  letting  the  sheep  into  the  shelter 
to  be  sheared.  It  is  the  most  inconsistent,  unjust  act  a  nation 
was  ever  guilty  of. 


Inconsistency  of  the  Government.  25 

"When  a  state  or  community  decide  that  the  saloons  are  a 
menace  to  the  ' '  life,  liberty  and  pursuit  of  happiness ' '  of  the 
people,  the  Government  ought  to  be  made  to  withdraw  federal 
licenses,  which  largely  nullify  all  good  results. 

On  this  question,  the  Government  is  like  many  individuals ; 
namely,  right  in  sentiment,  but  wrong  in  practice.  She  hopes 
to  appease  the  demands  of  the  people  by  handing  out  a  half 
loaf,  filled  with  poison. 

Clinton  N.  Howard  says:  We  are  everywhere  for  that 
local  Prohibition  that  gives  us  the  right  to  vote  out  the  saloon. 
But  do  not  ask  us  to  stop  there.  We  cannot.  We  will  not. 
With  10,000,000  Christian  voters  "marching  as  to  war,  with 
the  cross  of  Jesus  going  on  before,"  do  not  ask  us  to  limit 
our  endeavor  to  a  campaign  in  town  and  county  against  an 
organized  enemy  that  is  investing  the  entire  field,  stretching 
its  battle  line  from  court-house  to  capitol  and  infesting  the 
politics  of  the  nation,  from  policeman  to  President.  We 
cannot  and  we  will  not  consent  to  the  inconsistency  of  voting 
out  the  saloon  in  the  town  and  county  and  voting  in  the  saloon 
power  in  state  and  nation. 

We  are  not  opposed,  therefore,  to  Local  Option,  as  a  meas- 
ure to  give  the  people  the  power  to  vote  a  saloon  out  of  their 
town,  or  the  saloons  out  of  the  county,  but  if  any  one  supposes 
that  method  will  root  up  the  liquor  evil,  they  are  mistaken. 

It  is  helpful  sometimes  as  a  local  measure,  but  will  not  solve 
the  problem." 

We  must  keep  in  mind  continually  that  Local  Option  not 
only  confers  the  right  to  vote  the  saloon  out,  but  likewise  to 
vote  it  in.  We  are  very  glad  to  have  it  do  what  little  it 
can  to  vote  them  out ;  but  any  method  which  bestows  the  right 
of  the  majority  to  vote  in  an  evil,  is  wrong  in  principle  and 
inadequate  as  to  the  solution  of  the  problem. 


26  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  states  that  have  gone  from  Local  Option  to  Prohibition, 
have  done  so  because  Local  Option  was  tried  and  found  want- 
ing. Its  failure  helped  to  establish  state  Prohibition  rather 
than  its  success. 

Another  very  serious  weakness  in  the  plan  is,  that  Local 
Option  does  not  do  away  with  the  manufacture  of  alcohol, 
and  so  long  as  any  law  or  method  stops  short  of  closing  the 
liquor  factories,  the  drunkard  shops  will  remain  open. 

We  would  not  deprive  any  town  of  the  privilege  to  vote 
the  saloon  out,  but  beg  them  to  consider  the  fact  that  if  the 
saloon  is  an  evil  and  a  menace  to  them,  it  is  to  all,  and  ask 
them  to  therefore  do  as  they  would  like  to  be  done  by,  and 
while  they  cast  a  ballot  for  their  own  deliverance  from  the 
curse,  put  one  in  to  banish  it  from  the  state  and  Nation.  As 
Mr.  Howard  puts  it :  "To  vote  it  out  of  the  town  and  county 
and  then  vote  it  in  the  state  and  Nation"  is  "doing  evil  that 
good  may  come,"  and  largely  undoing  what  little  good  has 
been  accomplished. 

If  it  is  wrong  to  have  the  saloon  anywhere,  it  is  wrong 
everywhere.  Its  work  of  destruction  is  the  same  in  any  case, 
and  the  attempt  to  establish  two  different  standards  of  morals 
and  makes  confusion  and  works  harm. 

The  Anti-Saloon  League  claims  to  have  spent  an  average 
of  three  to  six  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year  for  the  past 
nineteen  years,  to  secure  Local  Option  laws.  If  that  amount 
of  money  had  been  used  to  teach  State  and  National  Prohibi- 
tion, we  do  not  believe  there  would  be  a  brewery  or  distillery 
standing  to-day,  turning  out  poison  for  beverage  purposes,  or 
a  saloon  anywhere  waiting  like  a  thief  in  the  night  for  his 
victims  or  a  pirate  at  sea  to  sink  a  ship  that  he  might  plunder 
the  drowning  people. 

"While  it  is  claimed  that  Local  Option  is  used  as  a  stepping 


Inconsistency  of  the  Government.  27 

stone  to  State  Prohibition,  it  is  positively  true  that  it  is  very 
often  urged  as  a  substitute  for  State  Prohibition.  It  is  pretty 
near  time  for  the  people  to  learn  that  you  cannot  climb  a  hill 
by  walking  down,  and  that  to  attempt  to  kill  a  mad  dog  by 
chopping  off  an  inch  of  his  tail  at  a  time  is  a  very  slow  pro- 
cess at  best.  "Why  not  strike  him  in  the  head  and  be  done 
with  it?  Is  it  not  possible  that  the  time  and  money  spent 
to  coax  people  to  cut  off  a  pinch  of  the  evil,  must  be  used 
over  and  over  again  until  we  reach  the  head  ?  Why  not  begin 
to  teach  that  the  surest  and  quickest  way  to  kill  a  tree  is 
to  cut  it  down.  That  the  way  to  stop  the  stench  of  a  hog 
pen  is  to  destroy  the  pen.  That  we  cannot  expect  to  kill  the 
saloon  by  giving  it  legal  right  to  exist,  or  even  yet  to  keep 
on  saying  whether  it  shall  or  shall  not  be. 

It  is  a  sort  of  a  teeter  board  plan.  One  day  you  are  up,  and 
the  next  time  the  saloon  is  up.  A  "Ring  around  the  Posy" 
game.  One  moment  you  knock  the  saloon  out,  but  the  next 
game  the  saloon  knocks  you  out. 

If  we  depend  upon  Local  Option  to  settle  the  problem,  we 
will  be  many  centuries  yet  winning  the  victory.  If  all  half- 
way measures  and  compromising  plans  would  be  dropped,  and 
everybody  turn  in  to  accomplish  what  we  all  know  must  be 
done  in  the  end,  namely,  secure  State  and  National  Prohibi- 
tion, we  would  not  only  save  years  of  time  and  barrels  of 
money,  but  millions  of  murdered  bodies  and  lost  souls.  Fewer 
homes  broken  up,  and  mothers'  hearts  healed  that  must  other- 
wise break. 

The  good  men  of  this  country  must  know,  if  they  stop  to 
reason  it  out,  that  we  must  go  to  Washington  and  the  state 
legislatures  to  kill  the  liquor  traffic. 

Why  waste  so  much  time  and  money  on  the  slow  Local 
Option  accommodation,  when  we  can  take  the  Prohibition 


28  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

special  that  makes  but  one  stop  between  home  and  Washing- 
ton, and  that  is  for  lunch  at  the  State  Capitol. 

We  shall  be  obliged  to  face  the  originators  of  the  crime  and 
the  protectors  of  the  evil  some  day.  Why  lose  so  many  pre- 
cious hours  at  way-stations  ? 


CHAPTER  IV. 


Liquor  Business  Unconstitutional. 

Whether  we  shall  ever  secure  a  verdict  or  not,  no  one  who 
investigates  the  situation  with  intelligence  shorn  of  all  preju- 
dice can  fail  to  conclude  that,  beyond  any  question  of  doubt, 
the  Liquor  Traffic  is  unconstitutional. 

Any  business  which  interferes  with  the  application  of  our 
expressed  principles  as  voiced  in  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence and  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion, cannot  be  legally  right. 

The  Government  itself  is  performing  an  act  of  treason 
toward  the  people  to  even  allow  such  an  evil  to  exist,  and 
doubly  so  when  it  gives  it  legal  sanction  and  protection. 

We  have  all  been  guaranteed  a  ' '  chance  to  life,  liberty  and 
the  pursuit  of  happiness;"  yet  an  evil  is  licensed  that  robs 
millions  every  year  of  all  their  God-given  and  Government- 
promised  blessings. 

We  are  told  that  "No  man  has  an  inherent  right  to  sell 
liquor  without  a  license,  because  he  does  not  have  an  inherent 
right  to  engage  in  the  sale  of  anything  that  will  work  harm 
to  his  fellow-man.  Yet  the  Government  commits  the  crime 
of  granting  a  special  privilege  for  the  sake  of  revenue  to 
unprincipled  men  to  steal  and  kill,  and  utterly  destroy  the 
peace  and  happiness  of  the  people. 

The  Supreme  Court  says,  "The  legislative  bodies  cannot 
barter  away  the  public  morals;  the  people  themselves  cannot 
do  so ;  much  less  their  servants  the  legislators. ' ' 

Then,  in  the  face  of  these  declarations,  the  Government 

29 


30  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

and  the  state  legislatures  pass  laws  to  license  evil-minded  men 
to  commit  all  these  crimes  against  the  people,  affecting  mil- 
lions of  innocent,  helpless  and  unwilling  victims  of  the  crime. 

It  is  also  written  in  Supreme  Court  documents  that,  "No 
man  has  the  inherent  right,  neither  can  he  buy  that  right 
at  any  price  to  do  that  which  will  barter  away  the  public 
health,  the  morals  and  the  safety  of  the  people."  Who  is  so 
mentally  blind  that  he  cannot  see,  and  so  stubborn  that  he 
will  not  admit,  that  when  the  Government  and  states  grant 
licenses  to  engage  in  this  heart-breaking,  home-robbing,  body- 
killing,  soul-destroying,  hell-filling  business,  every  law  of  de- 
cency, of  fair  play  and  civic  honesty  has  been  violated  and 
the  greatest  act  of  treachery  committed  which  ever  sold  a 
people  into  bondage.  Were  it  possible  to  do  so,  every  partici- 
pant in  this  crime  should  be  arrested  for  contempt  and  se- 
verely punished. 

We  wonder  how  much  longer  the  people  will  submit  to  these 
oppressions  and  consent  to  be  robbed  of  their  rightful  due. 

There  is  not  the  least  thing  about  this  infernal  business 
that  can  recommend  it  to  the  toleration  of  the  people. 

It  demoralizes  those  who  make  it,  those  who  sell  it,  those 
who  drink  it.  The  legislature  that  passes  the  law  is  demoral- 
ized. The  government  that  enters  into  the  scheme  of  crime  is 
demoralized.  From  the  time  it  issues  from  the  poisonous 
rooms  of  the  distillery  until  it  empties  into  the  hell  of  crime, 
dishonor  and  death,  that  it  demoralizes  everybody  who  tuoches 
it.  It  is  liquid  crime  and  treason ;  forgery  and  bribery,  torment 
and  plunder  the  whole  way  of  its  slimy  tracks. 

Go  along  the  banks  of  the  stream  of  death  and  look  at  the 
suicides,  the  insanity,  the  poverty,  the  ignorance,  the  distress, 
the  little  children  tugging  at  the  faded  dresses  of  weeping 
mothers;    look    at    the   blanched   faces   of   despairing   wives 


Liquor  Business  Unconstitutional.  31 

asking  for  bread ;  the  men  of  genius  it  has  wrecked ;  the  mil- 
lions struggling  with  the  imaginary  serpents  it  has  produced 
in  their  minds.  Then  think  of  the  jails,  the  almshouses,  the 
asylums,  the  prisons,  the  scaff olds  upon  either  hand ;  How  in 
the  name  of  common  sense,  decency  and  justice  can  a  govern- 
ment find  any  excuse  for  the  licensing  of  such  an  evil  as  an 
industry  from  which  to  derive  revenue;  and  how  can  a  sen- 
sible people  be  so  long-suffering,  so  blind  to  the  welfare  of 
themselves  and  fellow-men  as  to  allow  it  to  be? 

We  have  heard  much  of  late  about  checking  "corporate 
aggression;  individual  impositions;  plundering  of  the  Ee- 
public  under  guise  of  corporate  privileges,"  but  we  are  told 
in  the  same  breath  that  to  interfere  with  a  business  that  does 
all  this  and  more,  is  to  rob  the  people  of  their  "Personal 
liberty"  and  "Constitutional  rights." 

We  talk  about  revealing  the  corruption  of  officials  in  public 
places  and  condemning  them  to  the  fate  of  criminals,  then 
pass  laws  to  legalize  outlaws,  and  permit  men  to  commit  crime 
in  the  name  of  the  Government,  if  they  will  only  hand  over 
a  share  of  the  plunder. 

We  read  about  trying  to  save  cities  from  further  sacking 
by  aldermen,  and  grant  men  legal  privilege  to  "sack"  the 
homes,  the  happiness  and  lives  of  the  people. 

We  grow  eloquent  when  we  talk  about  rescuing  states  from 
confiscation  at  the  hands  of  their  own  legislators;  yet  allow 
men  in  the  liquor  business  to  confiscate  the  people,  legislators 
and  all.  We  declare  the  people  must  be  saved  from  the  po- 
litical thieves  who  have  stolen  every  accessible  thing  from 
a  postage  stamp  to  an  empire  of  land;  then  pass  laws  to 
give  these  pirate  liquor  dealers  right  of  way  to  steal  everything 
in  sight,  from  the  child  in  the  cradle  to  Congress.  The  ancient 
landmarks  of  our  fathers  are  being  removed  by  these  men 


32  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

who  get  fat  and  grow  rich  upon  the  carcasses  of  those  they 
have  killed  and  robbed.  The  posts,  stained  with  blood,  set 
along  the  highway  to  guide  us  to  life,  liberty  and  happiness 
have  been  torn  up  by  these  wolves  of  greed  and  avarice,  who 
have  been  licensed  to  prowl  around  all  hours  of  the  day  and 
night,  seeking  whom  they  may  devour;  and  they  are  none 
too  good  to  devour  everything  that  can  be  swallowed,  from 
the  sweet  little  curly -headed  boy  and  angel-faced  girl,  to  the 
tottering  old  man,  who  just  before  he  dropped  into  his 
drunkard's  grave,  to  sink  on  down  into  a  drunkard's  hell, 
went  into  a  murder  shop  and  dropped  his  last  nickel  into 
the  saloon-keeper's  money  drawer.  This  story  of  the  reign 
of  "King  Alcohol"  is  the  bloodiest  one  ever  written.  It 
could  never  be  told;  yet  we  are  asked  not  only  to  tolerate 
the  crime,  but  actually  make  it  a  protected  industry. 

Yet,  dark  as  the  picture  is,  we  believe  we  are,  in  the 
words  of  that  grand,  uncompromizing  hero,  Dr.  S.  C.  Swallow, 
' '  Far  past  the  sunrise  of  that  glorious  day  whose  setting  shall 
witness  the  unfolding  of  our  nation's  ensign  over  a  country 
redeemed  from  the  curse  of  beverage  intoxicants,"  a  nation 
redeemed  from  the  blot  and  blight  of  the  greatest  slave  trade 
that  ever  blackened  its  good  name.  Then,  and  not  until  then, 
have  we  a  right  to  sing, 

"And  the  Star-Spangled  Banner, 
O,  long  may  it  wave, 
O'er  the  land  of  the  free 

And  the  home  of  the  brave. ' ' 

Here  are  some  figures  for  men  who  supported  the  liquor 
traffic  in  1908,  to  think  about: 

It  is  estimated  that  580,000  boys  in  the  United  States  be- 
came addicted  to  the  use  of  alcohol  in  that  year.     The  same 


Liquor  Business  Unconstitutional.  33 

year  200,000  babies  were  smothered  to  death  by  drunken  pa- 
rents. Wallowed  over  in  their  beds  and  killed  as  animals 
would  kill  their  offspring;  4,786  wives  were  murdered  by 
drunken  husbands;  7,000  murders  were  committed  by  persons 
under  the  influence  of  liquor.  There  were  6,000  suicides  as 
a  result  of  drink;  1,000,000  deaths  were  brought  about  by 
drunken  cab  drivers  and  chauffeurs;  40,000  wives  and  moth- 
ers were  lost  husbands  and  sons  as  a  result  of  drink;  85,000 
persons  were  made  insane  through  intoxicating  liquors,  and 
100,000  men,  women  and  youths  went  to  prison  during  1908 
as  the  result  of  alcoholic  drinks.  Yet,  the  government  does 
not  recognize  this  business  as  an  evil,  menacing  the  welfare 
of  the  people,  but  treats  it  as  an  industry  from  which  to  de- 
rive revenue. 

The  dominant  political  parties  ignore  the  question  and  say 
it  is  not  an  issue  for  political  parties  to  take  up.  Worse  than 
all  this  professed  Christian  men  vote  for  men  and  parties  to 
remain  in  power,  who  are  so  blind  and  so  inhumanly  selfish 
they  cannot  or  will  not  see  that  in  licensing  the  liquor  busi- 
ness, the  government  and  the  states  are  protecting  slaughter- 
ing houses  that  kill  every  year  their  millions  of  victims  who 
otherwise  would  have  a  fair  chance  to  their  promised  "life, 
liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness." 

Let  every  man  who  votes  for  license  parties,  and  whiskey 
men,  remember  that  he  cannot  escape  being  held  responsible 
in  the  sight  of  God,  as  well  as  the  people,  for  the  products  of 
these  murder  mills. 

What  are  we  going  to  do,  dear  friends, 

In  the  year  that  is  to  come, 
To  banish  this  fiendish  hand  of  death, 

"Whose  messenger  is  rum? 


34  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Shall  we  fold  our  hands  and  bid  him  pass, 

As  he  has  done  before! 
Leaving  his  deadly,  poisoned  breath, 

At  every  unbarred  door. 

Let  the  fiend  still  torture  the  weary  wife? 

Still  poison  the  coming  child? 
Still  break  the  sorrowing  mother's  heart? 

Still  drive  the  sister  wild? 

Still  bring  to  the  grave  the  gray -haired  sire? 

Still  martyr  the  brave  young  soul? 
Till  the  streams  of  death  like  one  great  wave 

O'er  the  whole  great  nation  roll. 

Is  this  our  mission  on  earth,  dear  friends, 

In  the  year  that  is  to  come? 
If  not,  let  us  rise  and  do  our  work, 

Against  this  spirit  of  rum. 

There  is  not  a  soul  so  poor  and  weak, 

In  all  this  goodly  land; 
But  against  this  evil  a  word  may  speak 

And  lift  a  warning  hand. 

And  lift  a  warning  hand,  dear  friends, 

With  a  cry  for  home  and  hearth, 
Adding  voice  to  voice  to  voice  'till  the  sound  shall  swell 

Like  rum's  death  knell  o'er  the  earth. 

And  the  weak  and  the  wavering  shall  hear, 
And  the  faint  grow  brave  and  strong, 

And  the  true  and  good  and  great  and  wise 
Join  hands  to  right  this  wrong. 


CHAPTER'  V. 


The  White  Slave  Trade. 


Forsaken  by  all   but  Jesus. 

By  E.  Norink  Law. 

In  a  dark  and  lonely  chamber, 

Lay  a  wand 'ring  girl  one  night, 
With  her  erring  comrades   'round  her, 

And  death's  messenger  in  sight. 
As  they  soothed  her  aching  forehead, 

Wildly  tossing  with  the  pain, 
O'er  and  o'er  there  came  the  saying, 

' '  'Twas  for  me  that  Christ  was  slain. ' ' 

Once  she  was  a  pure,  loved  daughter, 

Walking  in  the  ways  of  God; 
But  the  foul  destroyer  sought  her; 

Now  she  rests  beneath  the  sod. 
No  kind  hand  outstretched  to  save  her, 

So  she  wandered  far  away, 
While  the  sad  and  weeping  mother, 

Prayed  for  her  return  each  day. 

When  the  mother  looked  upon  her, 

Laying  there  so  cold  and  white, 
Words  of  promise  from  the  Saviour 

Made  her  feel  that  all  was  right. 
'Twas  for  such  as  she  that  Jesus 

Said  those  loving  tender  words, 
Breathing  hope  and  comfort  to  us, 

' '  They  that  knock  shall  e  'er  be  heard. ' ' 

35 


36  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Come  to-night,  O  Lord,  and  fill  us 

With  Thy  Spirit  and  Thy  love, 
Saviour,  dear,  O,  help  and  lead  us 

To  the  realms  of  peace  above. 
And  we  pray  that  we  may  never 

Fail  the  cheering  word  to  give; 
But  with  the  help  of  God  endeav'r, 

Bid  the  erring  "Look  and  live." 

The  greatest  shame  of  our  nation  to-day  is  that  not  only 
the  liquor  traffic  is  licensed  and  protected  hy  the  Government, 
but  that  other  great  evils  are  allowed  to  go  on  unmolested. 

We  shall  consider  the  unspeakable  horror  known  as  the 
"White  Slave  Trade,"  as  another  great  peril  of  this  pro- 
fessed civilized,  Christianized  Nation. 

The  greatest  story  of  shame  ever  told  in  the  history  of  the 
world  must  be  given  to  the  people  in  the  narration  of  this 
horrible  "Traffic  in  girls."  There  are  many  who  will  say 
such  a  story  should  never  be  told.  The  exposures  of  municipal 
officers  and  even  those  higher  up  in  authority  should  not  be 
made.  It  must  be  done,  however,  if  we  are  to  stop  this 
buying  and  selling  of  human  flesh  and  immortal  souls  into 
the  most  shameful,  pitiful,  horrifying,  sinful  practice  that 
men  who  pretend  to  have  a  spark  of  civilization  in  them  ever 
engaged  in. 

In  the  beginning  of  this  story,  we  will  reprint  in  full  the 
article  written  by  S.  S.  McClure,  and  printed  in  their  splendid 
magazine  in  November,  1909. 

Let  no  one  say  these  things  are  not  true.  They  are  too 
horribly  so,  and  what  is  true  of  New  York  is  also  true  of  many 
other  cities  in  the  country. 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  37 

THE  TAMMANYIZING  OF  A  CIVILIZATION. 


By  8.  S.  McClure. 

For  a  thousand  years  the  Germanic  races  have  built  up, 
slowly  and  laboriously,  the  present  civilization  of  the  West, 
the  great  and  complicated  structure  that  now  lifts  the  whole 
race  above  barbarism  and  bestiality,  and  gives  the  individual 
the  guaranties  of  security  and  justice  and  decency  that  make 
civilized  life  more  worth  living  than  savagery.  The  three 
leading  nations  in  which  this  development  has  come  about 
have  been  England,  Germany,  and  the  United  States.  The 
United  States  had  every  prospect,  from  the  traditions  and 
motives  and  stock  of  its  founders,  of  carrying  this  develop- 
ment to  its  highest  point. 

But  for  at  least  half  a  century  strong  reactionary  forces 
have  been  continuously  at  work  in  this  country  to  drag  its 
inheritance  of  civilization  down  again  to  barbarism.  The 
lowest  point  that  they  have  yet  attained  is  their  nation-wide 
organization  for  the  sale  of  the  bodies  of  women,  described 
in  the  article,  ' '  The  Daughters  of  the  Poor, ' '  by  George  Kibbe 
Turner,  in  this  number  of  McClure' 's.  The  deep-seated  and 
instinctive  disgust  of  every  normal  person  for  this  transac- 
tion proves  beyond  any  demonstration  its  essential  nature. 
It  is  not  a  mere  attack  on  individual  morals.  It  aims  at  the 
disintegration  and  degradation  of  a  civilization,  and  the  social 
training  of  centuries — set  in  the  bones  and  marrow  of  the 
race — revolts  against  it. 

How  America's  Civilization  Has  Been  Degraded. 

This  fifty  years  of  struggle  to  degrade  the  standards  and 
guaranties  of  civilization  in  America  has  come  about  largely 
through  the  populations  of  cities.    This  is  perfectly  natural. 


38  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

For  forty  years  large  American  cities  have  contained  great 
masses  of  primitive  peoples  from  the  farms  of  Europe,  trans- 
ported to  this  country  as  laborers,  together  with  a  considerable 
proportion  of  negro  slaves  liberated  by  the  Civil  War.  To 
this  body  of  people — absolutely  ignorant  in  tradition  or  prac- 
tice of  the  development  and  operation  of  civilization  by  self- 
government — was  suddenly  given  the  domination  of  American 
city  life  by  manhood  suffrage.  From  the  beginning  of  the 
shifting  of  power  into  these  unaccustomed  hands,  the  develop- 
ment inevitable  to  this  class  of  population  since  and  before 
the  time  of  Rome  has  been  in  progress.  They  have  been 
exploited  on  every  hand,  and,  through  them,  the  entire  popu- 
lation of  American  cities;  in  the  meanwhile  they  have  been 
kept  in  control  by  their  exploiters  through  systematic  largesses 
of  public  wages,  charity,  or  entertainment.  In  this  ample 
field  for  their  enterprise  have  sprung  up  organizations  for 
the  profitable  debauching  of  populations,  such  as  have  rarely 
if  ever  been  equaled  in  the  history  of  the  world. 

The  obvious  way  to  exploit  and  degrade  populations  of  this 
kind  has  been  along  two  lines  of  strong  primitive  appeal — 
their  saturation  with  alcoholic  liquor,  and  the  development 
of  sexual  license.  The  whole  system  has  been  a  perfectly 
natural  social  growth — the  exploiters  as  well  as  the  exploited. 
And  the  incentive  necessarily  behind  the  process  has  been  the 
profit  that  could  be  made  by  abrogating  the  laws  so  as  to  de- 
velop and  exploit  to  the  limit  the  appetites  and  passions  of 
the  great  body  of  the  least  trained  and  most  undefended 
population. 

Seventy  Years  of  Tammany  Hall. 

The  oldest  and  most  infamous  organization  in  America  for 
exploiting  this  population  is  Tammany  Hall  of  New  York, 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  39 

which  the  great  classic  historian,  Professor  Guglielmo  Ferrero, 
recently  compared  to  the  very  similar  organizations  that  were 
formed  for  exploiting  the  city  of  Rome  during  its  decadence. 
For  fifty  years  and  more  this  body  has  perverted  civilization 
in  New  York,  using  the  great  politically  untrained  population 
for  this  purpose.  Its  political  saloon-keepers  have  killed  un- 
numbered multitudes  of  these  people  through  excessive  drink- 
ing; its  political  procurers  have  sold  the  bodies  of  their 
daughters;  its  contractors  and  street-railway  magnates  have 
crowded  them  into  the  deadly  tenement  districts  by  defraud- 
ing them  of  their  rights  of  cheap  and  decent  transportation ; 
and  its  sanitary  officials  have  continuously  murdered  a  high 
percentage  of  the  poor  by  their  sale  of  the  right  to  continue 
fatal  and  filthy  conditions  in  these  tenement  districts,  con- 
trary to  law.  Meantime  they  have  kept  control  of  the  popula- 
tion they  have  exploited  by  their  cunning  distribution  of 
wages  and  charity. 

The  story  of  the  development  of  this  organization  for  the 
promoting  of  barbarism  is  illuminating  enough  to  justify  giv- 
ing the  following  outline  of  its  progress  during  the  past 
seventy  years,  taken  from  Gustavus  Myers'  history  of  the 
society : 

In  1842  Tammany  organized  immigrants  into  voting  gangs. 

In  1851  the  Common  Council  first  became  generally  known 
as  "The  Forty  Thieves."  The  city  government  was  thor- 
oughly organized  for  "graft,"  from  the  receipt  of  large 
bribes  by  the  aldermen  for  franchises,  to  the  payment  by  the 
police  of  a  regular  schedule  of  prices  for  promotions. 

By  1856  the  saloon  power  had  grown  until  it  controlled  the 
politics  of  the  city.  The  saloon-keepers  furnished  cheaply 
gangs  of  illegal  voters,  ballot-box  stuffers,  and  "shoulder  hit- 
ters" to  intimidate  citizens  and  smash  ballot-boxes. 


40  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Between  1865  and  1871 — including  both  city  appropriations 
and  bond  issues — New  York  City  was  robbed  of  about  $200,- 
000,000  by  Tammany  Hall  under  the  rule  of  "Boss"  Tweed. 

In  1869  the  impossibility  of  obtaining  justice  under  the 
corrupt  Tammany  judiciary  brought  about  the  serious  sug- 
gestion— published  in  a  standard  magazine — that  a  vigilance 
committee  be  formed  in  New  York  along  the  lines  of  that 
of  that  organized  to  clear  up  San  Francisco  in  the  days  of  its 
first  lawlessness. 

In  1871  the  exposures  of  Tammany  Hall  rule,  together  with 
the  arrest  of  Tweed,  made  its  name  a  by-word  across  the  earth 
for  political  corruption.    It  was  believed  to  be  crushed. 

In  1872,  Samuel  J.  Tilden,  August  Belmont,  Charles 
O 'Conor,  and  other  leading  citizens  were  elected  Tammany 
sachems. 

In  1874  Tammany  Hall  again  secured  control  of  New  York 
City  government  (by  the  familiar  plan  of  advancing  respecta- 
ble and  notable  men  to  the  prominent  places  in  their  organiza- 
tion). Fully  three-quarters  of  its  office-seekers  in  the  election 
were  connected  with  the  liquor  trade,  many  of  them  being 
keepers  of  low  groggeries.  Nine  out  of  fifteen  Tammany  can- 
didates for  alderman  were  former  creatures  of  the  Tweed  ring 
— one  of  them  being  under  two  indictments  for  fraud. 

In  1884  came  the  Broadway  street-railway  scandal,  which 
gave  the  word  "boodle"  to  the  language,  and  resulted  in 
sending  many  aldermen  to  the  penitentiary. 

In  1892  revenue  from  vice  assumed  great  proportions.  The 
estimated  annual  blackmail  by  the  Tammany  police  alone  was 
$7,000,000. 

In  1904  the  Lexow  Committee's  investigations  showed  of- 
ficial encouragement  and  cultivation  of  vice  by  the  Tammany 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  41 

Hall  administration,  which  astonished  and  horrified  the  ciliv- 
ized  world. 

Mr.  Moss  on  the  Beginning  op  the  Political  Procurer. 

Myers'  history  closed  before  the  development  of  the  pro- 
curer and  merchant  of  vice  as  a  power  in  Tammany  Hall  was 
fully  comprehended.  However,  the  new  development  of 
vice  in  the  Tammany  districts  of  the  East  Side  tenement  sec- 
tion of  New  York  was  being  watched  and  understood  by  com- 
petent observers. 

In  1897  Frank  Moss,  ex-president  of  the  New  York  Police 
Board,  trustee  of  the  City  Vigilance  League,  and  counsel  of 
the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Crime,  described  conditions 
of  life  in  the  red-light  district  of  the  East  Side  in  his  book, 
' '  The  Amercan  Metropolis, '  '*  as  follows : 

"Women  of  all  nationalities  have  drifted  into  the  district, 
and  are  unable  to  live  out  of  it.  There  has  grown  up,  as  an 
adjunct  of  this  herd  of  female  wretchedness,  a  fraternity  of 
fetid  male  vermin  (nearly  all  of  them  being  Russian  or  Polish 
Jews),  who  are  unmatchable  for  impudence  and  bestiality, 
and  who  reek  with  all  unmanly  and  vicious  humors.  They 
are  called  '  pimps. '  A  number  of  them  are  on  the  roll  of  the 
Max  Hochstim  Association.  They  have  a  regular  federation, 
and  manage  several  clubs,  which  are  influential  in  local  poli- 
tics, and  which  afford  them  the  power  to  watch  their  poor 
women  victims,  to  secure  their  hard-  and  ill-earned  money, 

and  to  punish  them  when  they  are  refractory They 

stand  by  each  other,  and  by  the  aid  of  the  powerful  politicians 
of  the  ward,  and  of  professional  witnesses,  they  send  refrac- 
tory women  to  the  'Island'  ( prison )."f 

•Published  by  the  late  P.  F.  Collier,  founder  of  Collier's  Weekly. 
f  That  is,  those  who  would  not  pay  their  earnings  to  their  manager. 


42  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Bishop  Potter's  Protest  Against  Tammany's  Exploitation 

of  Vice. 


est* 

In  1900  the  moral  forces  of  New  York  awoke  to  an  under- 
standing of  the  great  political  power  of  the  purveyor  of  vice 
under  the  Tammany  administration  of  Mayor  Van  Wyck. 
The  late  Bishop  Henry  C.  Potter,  who  was  particularly  active 
among  the  Protestants  of  the  time,  summarized  the  existing 
conditions  as  follows : 

"A  corrupt  system,  whose  infamous  details  have  been 
steadily  uncovered,  to  our  increasing  horror  and  humiliation, 
was  brazenly  ignored  by  those  who  were  fattening  on  its  spoils, 
and  the  world  was  presented  with  the  astounding  spec- 
tacle of  a  great  municipality  whose  civic  mechanism  was 
largely  employed  in  trading  in  the  bodies  and  souls  of  the 
defenseless." 

The  situation  was  treated  in  great  detail  by  Bishop  Potter 
in  his  open  letter  to  Mayor  Van  Wyck  on  November  15,  1900 : 

"But  the  thing  that  is  of  consequence,  Sir,  is  that  when  a 
minister  of  religion  goes  to  the  headquarters  of  the  police  of 
his  district  to  appeal  to  them  for  the  protection  of  the  young, 
the  innocent  and  defenseless,  against  the  leprous  harpies 
who  are  hired  as  runners  and  touters  for  the  lowest  and 
most  infamous  dens  of  vice,  he  is  met  not  only  with  contempt 
and  derision  (of  police  officials)  but  with  the  coarsest  insult 
and  obloquy. 

"I  affirm  that  the  virtual  safeguarding  of  vice  in  the  city 
of  New  York  is  a  burning  shame  to  any  decent  and  civilized 
community  and  an  intolerable  outrage  upon  those  whom  it 
especially  and  pre-eminently  concerns. 

"But  I  approach  you,  Sir,  to  protest  with  all  my  power 
against  a  condition  of  things  in  which  vice  is  not  only  toler- 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  43 

ated  but  shielded  and  encouraged  by  those  whose  sworn  duty 
it  is  to  repress  and  discourage  it,  and  in  the  name  of  unsullied 
youth  and  innocence,  of  young  girls  and  their  mothers  who, 
living  under  conditions  often  of  privation  and  the  hard 
struggle  for  a  livelihood,  have  in  them  every  instinct  of  virtue 
and  purity  that  are  the  ornaments  of  any  so-called  gentle- 
woman in  the  land. 

"I  know  those  of  whom  I  speak — their  homes,  their  lives, 
their  toil,  and  their  aspirations.  Their  sensibility  to  outrage 
or  insult  is  as  keen  as  that  of  those  who  are  in  your  own  house- 
hold or  mine  and,  before  God  and  in  the  face  of  the  citizens 
of  New  York,  I  protest,  as  my  people  have  charged  me  to  do, 
against  the  habitual  insult,  the  persistent  menace,  the  unut- 
terably defiling  contacts,  to  which,  day  by  day,  because  of  the 
base  complicity  of  the  police  of  New  York  with  the  lowest 
forms  of  vice  and  crime,  they  are  subjected. 

"And  in  the  names  of  these  little  ones,  these  weak  and  de- 
fenseless ones,  Christian  and  Hebrew  alike,  of  many  races 
and  tongues,  but  of  homes  in  which  God  is  feared,  and  His 
law  reverenced,  and  virtue  and  decency  honored  and  exempli- 
fied, I  call  upon  you,  Sir,  to  save  these  people  from  a  living 
hell,  defiling,  deadly,  damning,  to  which  the  criminal  supine- 
ness  of  the  constituted  authorities,  set  for  the  defense  of  de- 
cency and  good  order,  threatens  to  doom  them. 

The  situation  which  confronts  us  in  this  metropolis  of 
America  is  of  such  a  nature  as  may  well  make  us  a  by-word 
and  hissing  among  the  nations  of  the  world. 

' '  Such  a  Condition  Nowhere  Else  on  Earth.  ' ' 

"For  nowhere  else  on  earth,  I  verily  believe,  does  there 
exist  such  a  situation  as  defiles  and  dishonors  New  York  today. 
Vice  exists  in  many  cities,  but  there  is  at  least  some  persistent 


44  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

repression  of  its  external  manifestations,  and  the  agents  of  the 
law  are  not,  as  here,  widely  believed  to  be  fattening  npon  the 
fruits  of  its  most  loathsome  and  unnamable  forms. 

"I  come  to  you,  Sir,  with  this  protest  in  accordance 
with  the  instructions  lately  laid  upon  me  by  the  Convention 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  of  the  Diocese  of  New  York. 

"In  all  these  months  (of  protest)  the  condition  of  things 
in  whole  neighborhoods  has  not  improved,  but  rather  grown 
worse.  Vice  not  only  flaunts  itself  in  the  most  open,  ribald 
forms,  but  hard-working  fathers  and  mothers  find  it  harder 
than  ever  to-day  to  defend  their  households  from  a  rapacious 
licensiousness  which  stops  at  no  outrage  and  spares  no  ten- 
derest  victim.  Such  a  state  of  things  cries  to  God  for  ven- 
geance, and  calls  no  less  loudly  to  you  and  me  for  redress. 
,  "Henry  C.  Potter, 

"Bishop  of  New  York." 

The  Committee  of  Fifteen. 

The  horrible  revelations  of  conditions  under  the  Van  Wyck 
administration  aroused  public  interest  to  such  an  extent  that 
a  body  of  citizens  was  chosen  to  investigate  the  conditions 
of  the  white  slave  trade.  This  was  the  Committee  of  Fifteen ; 
rarely,  if  ever,  has  an  organization  of  such  able  and  prominent 
men  taken  part  in  the  public  affairs  of  New  York,  as  will  be 
seen  from  the  following  list  of  its  members : 

The  late  "William  Henry  Baldwin,  Jr.  (chairman),  Harvard, 
1885;  president  of  the  Long  Island  Kailroad  Company. 

Felix  Adler,  Columbia,  1870,  Ph.D.,  Berlin;  professor  of 
Hebrew  at  Cornell  1874  to  1876 ;  founder  of  Society  for  Ethi- 
cal Culture. 

The  late  Joel  Benedict  Erhardt;  prominent  business  man 
and  soldier;  from  1883  to  1884  Police  Commissioner  of  New 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  45 

York  City;  president  of  the  Lawyers'  Surety  Company  and  a 
trustee  of  the  Bowery  Savings  Bank. 

Austen  G.  Fox,  Harvard  1869;  Special  Assistant  District 
Attorney  in  the  prosecution  of  police  officials  after  the  Lexow 
investigation ;  chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Nine  on  the  Po- 
lice Problem  in  1905. 

John  S.  Kennedy,  prominent  banker. 

William  J.  O'Brien,  master  granite-cutter  and  a  prominent 
labor-union  leader. 

The  late  Alexander  E.  Orr,  several  times  president  of  the 
Produce  Exchange  and  of  the  New  York  Chamber  of  Com- 
merce; President  of  the  Board  of  Rapid  Transit  Commis- 
sioners. 

George  Foster  Peabody,  prominent  banker;  trustee  of  the 
Hampton  Normal  and  Agricultural  Institution. 

George  Haven  Putnam,  publisher. 

The  late  John  Harsen  Rhoades,  president  of  the  Greenwich 
Savings  Bank  and  director  of  many  banks  and  financial  insti- 
tutions. 

Jacob  H.  Schiff,  member  of  the  firm  of  Kuhn,  Loeb  &  Com- 
pany, bankers;  director  of  the  National  City  Bank  and  vari- 
ous other  institutions. 

A.  J.  Smith,  professor  in  the  Medical  Department  of  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  and  various  other  medical  insti- 
tutions; author. 

Charles  Sprague  Smith,  educator,  lecturer,  and  writer. 

Charles  Stewart  Smith,  ex-president  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce;  director  in  a  large  number  of  financial  institu- 
tions. 

Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,  professor  of  political  economy; 
prominent  in  various  movements  for  municipal  reform  in  New 
York  City. 


46  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  Committee  of  Fifteen  on  the  Political  Power  of  Vice. 

This  body  of  men  published,  in  1902,  a  book  covering  their 
investigation  of  the  social  evil  in  New  York  City.  Their  state- 
ments showed  conditions  so  inconceivable  that  they  would 
scarcely  be  credited  on  lesser  authority.  Concerning  the 
power  which  the  purveyors  of  vice  had  now  secured  in  the 
political  machine  they  said : 

"The  employees  (of  these  disorderly  houses)  openly  cried 
their  wares  upon  the  streets,  and  children  of  the  neighborhood 
were  given  pennies  and  candy  to  distribute  the  cards  of  the 
prostitutes.  A  system  of  'watch-boys'  or  'lighthouses'  was 
also  adopted,  by  which  the  news  of  any  impending  danger 
could  be  carried  throughout  a  precinct  in  a  very  few  minutes. 

"Honest  police  officers  who  attempted  to  perform  their 
duties  were  defied  by  the  'cadets'  and  'lighthouses.' 

"For  a  police  officer  to  incur  the  enmity  of  a  powerful 
'madame'  meant  the  transfer  of  that  officer  'for  the  good  of 
the  service,'  if  not  to  another  precint,  at  least  to  an  undesir- 
able post  in  the  same  precinct.  A  virtual  reign  of  terror 
existed  among  the  honest  patrolmen  and  the  ignorant  citizens 
of  these  districts. ' ' 

Committee  of  Fifteen  Describes  the  "Cadet." 

The  Committee  of  Fifteen  describes  the  "cadet,"  the  new 
political  power  of  whom  Mr.  Moss  had  written  in  1897,  as 
follows : 

"His  occupation  is  professional  seduction.  By  occasional 
visits  he  succeeds  in  securing  the  friendship  of  some  attractive 
shop-girl.  By  apparently  kind  and  generous  treatment,  and 
by  giving  the  young  girl  glimpses  of  a  standard  of  living 
which  she  has  never  dared  hope  to  attain,  this  friendship 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  47 

rapidly  widens  into  infatuation.  The  Raines-law  hotel  or  the 
'furnished  room  house,'  with  its  cafe  on  the  ground  floor,  is 
soon  visited  for  refreshments.  After  a  drugged  drink,  the 
girl  wakens  and  finds  herself  at  the  mercy  of  her  supposed 
friend.  Through  fear  and  promises  of  marriage  she  casts  her 
fortunes  with  her  companion  and  goes  to  live  with  him.  The 
companion  disappears;  and  the  shop-girl  finds  herself  an  in- 
mate of  a  house  of  prostitution. ' ' 

Committee  of  Fifteen  on  Dangers  of  Children  in 
Tenements. 

The  committee's  investigation  of  the  condition  of  the  tene- 
ment house  showed  how  almost  impossible  it  was  for  the 
children  of  the  poor  to  grow  up  honest  and  virtuous  under 
this  thorough  organization  of  vice  and  procuring  by  Tam- 
many politicians.     Concerning  this  it  says: 

"The  revenue-producing  power  of  the  sale  of  immunity  by 
the  police  seemed  to  make  the  appetite  of  the  police  insatiable. 
The  infamy  of  the  private  house,  with  all  the  horrors  arising 
from  the  'cadet'  system,  did  not  satisfy  official  greed.  The 
tenement  houses  were  levied  upon,  and  the  prostitutes  began 
to  ply  their  trade  therein  openly.  In  many  of  these  tene- 
ment houses  as  many  as  fifty  children  resided.  An  acquaint- 
ance by  the  children  with  adult  vices  was  inevitable.  The 
children  of  the  tenements  eagerly  watch  the  new  sights  in 
their  midst.  The  statistics  of  venereal  diseases  among  chil- 
dren and  the  many  revolting  stories  from  the  red-light  district 
tell  how  completely  they  learned  the  lessons  taught  them." 

United  Hebrew  Charities  on  Jewish  Conditions. 

The  condition  of  life  among  the  Jewish  people,  who  were 
subjected  to   the  influences  of  this   district,   was   described 


48  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

by  a  statement  published  in  the  Twenty-seventh  Annual  Re- 
port of  the  United  Hebrew  Charities  of  New  York,  in  October, 
1901.    This  said: 

"The  horrible  congestion  in  which  so  many  of  our  co- 
religionists live,  the  squalor  and  filth,  the  lack  of  air  and 
sunlight,  the  absence  frequently  of  even  the  common  de- 
cencies, are  too  well  known  to  require  repetition  at  this  writ- 
ing. Even  more  pronounced  are  the  results  accuring  from 
these  conditions:  the  vice  and  crime,  the  irreligiousness,  lack 
of  self-restraint,  indifference  to  social  conventions,  indulgence 
of  the  most  degraded  and  perverted  appetites,  which  are  daily 
growing  more  pronounced  and  more  offensive." 

When  it  is  realized  that  the  Jewish  people  in  New  York 
number  over  800,000,  and  that  a  great  percentage  of  these  are 
very  poor, — so  poor  that  from  75,000  to  100,000  persons,  ac- 
cording to  reliable  authorities,  are  more  or  less  dependent 
upon  alms, — the  danger  arising  from  the  tempting  and  ex- 
ploiting of  members  of  such  a  population  by  political  pro- 
curers can  easily  be  seen. 

Government  Reports  on  Present  "White  Slave  Trade. 

It  was  the  hope  of  the  Committee  of  Fifteen  that  the  system 
of  political  procuring  in  New  York  City  was  on  the  wane. 
But  two  United  States  Government  investigations  and  a 
State  investigation  dealing  with  the  problem  indicate  that  this 
is  far  from  true.  The  findings  of  the  Federal  investigators  are 
not  given  out  for  publication  at  the  time  this  is  written,  but 
they  will  soon  appear.  They  will  show  a  shocking  condition 
condition  throughout  the  United  States,  and  a  general  drift  of 
the  merchandising  of  women  into  the  hands  of  procurers. 
Students  of  the  problem  believe  that  at  least  two-thirds  of  the 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  49 

prostitutes  of  the  country  are  controlled  by  individual  cadets, 
and  that  in  New  York  City  the  proportion  is  much  higher. 

New  York  State  Eeport  on  White  Slave  Trade's 
Organization. 

The  report  of  the  Commission  of  Immigration  of  the  State 
of  New  York,  published  last  summer,  treats  the  present  condi- 
tions of  the  white  slave  trade  in  New  York  as  follows : 

' '  In  the  State  of  New  York,  as  in  other  States  and  countries 
of  the  world,  there  are  organized,  ramified,  and  well-equipped 
associations  to  secure  girls  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution. 
The  recruiting  of  such  girls  in  this  country  is  largely  among 
those  who  are  poor,  ignorant,  or  friendless.  The  attention  of 
the  Commission  has  been  called  to  one  organization,  incor- 
porated under  the  laws  of  New  York  State  as  a  mutual  benefit 
society,  with  the  alleged  purpose  'to  promote  the  sentiment 
of  regard  and  friendship  among  the  members  and  to  render 
assistance  in  case  of  necessity. '  This  society  is,  in  reality,  an 
association  of  gamblers,  procurers,  and  keepers  of  disorderly 
houses,  organized  for  the  purpose  of  mutual  protection  in 
their  business.  Some  of  the  cafes,  restaurants  and  other  places 
conducted  by  the  members  are  meeting-places  for  those  en- 
gaged in  the  business  of  importation.  The  organization  in- 
cludes a  membership  of  about  one  hundred  residents  of  New 
York  City,  and  hast  representatives  and  correspondents  in 
various  cities  of  the  country,  notably  in  Pittsburg,  Chicago, 
and  San  Francisco." 

The  Trade  in  Pittsburg. 

The  conditions  existing  in  the  three  large  centers  of  the 
' '  white  slave  trade ' '  alluded  to  by  the  State  Commission  have 
been  previously  described  in  this  magazine.     In  May,  1903, 


50  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Lincoln  Steffens  wrote  of  the  situation  in  Pittsburg  as  follows : 
"  Disorderly  houses  are  managed  by  ward  syndicates.  Per- 
mission is  had  from  the  syndicate  real-estate  agent,  who  alone 
can  rent  them.  The  syndicate  hires  the  houses  from  the  own- 
ers at,  say,  $35  a  month,  and  he  lets  it  to  a  woman  at  from 
$35  to  $50  a  week.  For  furniture  the  tenant  must  go  to  the 
'official  furniture  man,'  who  delivers  $1,000 's  worth  of  'fix- 
ings' for  a  note  for  $3,000,  on  which  high  interest  must  be 
paid.  For  beer  the  tenant  must  go  to  the  'official  bottler,' 
and  pay  $2  for  a  one-dollar  case  of  beer ;  for  wines  and  liquors 
to  the  'official  liquor  commissioner,'  who  charges  $10  for  five 
dollars'  worth;  for  clothes  to  the  'official  wrapper-maker.' 
These  women  may  not  buy  shoes,  hats,  jewelry,  or  any  other 
luxury  or  necessity  except  from  the  official  concessionaries, 
and  then  only  at  the  official,  monopoly  prices.  If  the  victims 
have  anything  left,  a  police  or  some  other  city  official  is 
said  to  call  and  get  it  (there  are  rich  ex-police  officials  in 
Pittsburg)." 

The  Large  Business  in  Chicago. 

In  April,  1907,  George  Kibbe  Turner,  after  an  investigation 
of  several  months,  described  the  situation  of  this  political  in- 
dustry in  Chicago  as  follows : 

"The  largest  regular  business  in  furnishing  women,  how- 
ever, is  done  by  a  company  of  men,  largely  composed  of  Rus- 
sian Jews,  who  supply  women  of  that  nationality  to  the  trade. 
These  men  have  a  sort  of  loosely  organized  association  extend- 
ing through  the  large  cities  of  the  country,  among  their  chief 
centers  being  New  York,  Boston,  Chicago,  and  New  Orleans. 
In  Chicago  they  now  furnish  the  great  majority  of  the  pros- 
titutes in  the  cheaper  district  of  the  West  Side  Levee,  their 
women  having  driven  out  the  English-speaking  women  in  the 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  51 

last  ten  years.  From  the  best  returns  available,  there  are 
some  ten  or  a  dozen  women  offered  for  sale  of  the  houses  of 
prostitution  in  the  Eighteenth  Ward  every  week.  The  price 
paid  is  about  fifty  dollars  a  head.  In  some  exceptional  cases 
seventy-five  dollars  has  been  given.  This  money,  paid  over  to 
the  agent,  is  charged  up  to  the  debt  of  the  woman  to  the 
house.  She  pays,  that  is,  for  her  own  sale.  In  addition,  she 
gives  over  a  large  share  of  her  earnings  to  the  man  who 
places  her." 

What  this  means  to  the  victims  is  thus  described  further 
on  by  Mr.  Turner: 

' '  To  the  average  individual  woman  concerned,  it  means  the 
expectation  of  death  under  ten  years;  to  practically  all  the 
longer  survivors,  a  villainous  and  hideous  after-life.  There 
is  a  great  profit  in  this  business,  however.  Chicago  has  it  or- 
ganized— from  the  supplying  of  young  girls,  to  the  drugging 
of  the  older  and  less  salable  women  out  of  existence — with  the 
nicety  of  modern  industry.  As  in  the  stock-yards,  not  one 
shred  of  flesh  is  wasted. ' ' 

A  Chicago  Newspaper  Describes  the  Local  Market. 

The  Chicago  papers  carry  articles  dealing  with  this  business 
almost  continuously;  indeed,  that  city  is  now  in  the  midst  of 
the  discussion  of  its  perennial  municipal  scandal,  concerning 
the  protection  of  the  traffic  in  women  by  city  officials.  On 
October  22,  1906,  during  one  of  the  periodical  outbreaks  of 
feeling  against  the  trade  in  Chicago,  the  Daily  News  said : 

"Vice  and  depravity  are  openly  traded  in  as  a  commodity 
in  Chicago,  and  the  streets  of  a  district  traversed  daily  by  at 
least  one-third  of  the  city's  population  are  its  marketplace. 
The  district  is  bounded  by  Sangamon,  Halsted,  Lake,  and 
Monroe  streets,  and  is  known  as  the  West  Side  Levee.     This 


52  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

public  emporium  of  immorality  and  degration  exists  by  virtue 
of  a  regularly  organized  'protective  association,'  whose  mem- 
bers laugh  at  law,  successfully  defy  those  who  have  tried  to 
cope  with  them,  and,  through  some  mysterious  influence,  are 
enabled  to  continue  their  traffic  with  a  license  and  abandon 
that  makes  of  the  West  Side  Levee  an  open  brothel." 

Chicago  Organizes  to  Fight  Traffic. 

In  Chicago,  as  throughout  the  country,  the  moral  and  con- 
structive forces  among  the  Jews  have  been  greatly  exercised 
by  the  appearance  of  the  Jewish  cadet  and  girl  in  the  white 
slave  trade.  During  the  past  summer  a  police  inspector, 
Edward  McCann,  was  tried  for  receiving  money  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  traffic  in  women  on  the  West  Side  of  the  city. 
In  this  trial  it  appeared  that  Julius  Frank,  who,  with  his 
brother  Louis,  has  been  for  years  notorious  as  a  leader  in 
the  business  in  women  there,  was  the  president  of  a  Jewish 
church  congregation.  This  revelation  caused  great  excite- 
ment among  the  Jews  of  Chicago,  and  has  resulted  in  bring- 
ing to  a  head  a  general  movement  to  organize  against  the 
white  slave  trade  of  that  city.  The  Chicago  News  of  Septem- 
ber 25,  1909,  tells  the  story  of  this  movement,  which  is  led 
by  Jews,  and  whose  counsel  is  to  be  Clifford  G.  Roe,  the  young 
Chicago  attorney  who  has  been  the  most  prominent  figure  in 
the  local  campaign  against  the  white  slave  trade  in  Chicago 
during  the  past  two  years.    The  News  says : 

"Traffic  in  white  slaves  and  pandering  are  to  be  stamped 
out  in  a  wide  and  far-reaching  crusade  in  Chicago,  plans  for 
which  were  made  known  to-day  by  Adolf  Kraus,  one  of  the 
guiding  spirits  in  the  movement.  This  vice  is  to  be  attacked 
in  a  systematic  way,  according  to  Mr.  Kraus,  who  talked  of 
the  aims  of  the  movement,  following  disclosures  in  the  recent 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  53 

trial  of  Police  Inspector  Edward  McCann.  Big  church  and 
civic  organizations,  regardless  of  creed,  are  to  back  the  move 
in  a  financial  way.  The  B  'nai  B  'rith,  of  which  Mr.  Kraus  is 
president,  and  the  Commercial  Club,  are  two  of  the  big  asso- 
ciations behind  the  crusade. 

''Clifford  Gr.  Eoe,  former  Assistant  States'  Attorney,  who, 
under  the  administration  of  John  J.  Healy  as  State  prose- 
cutor, handled  the  white  slave  traffic  cases,  has  been  engaged 
and  will  direct  the  obtaining  of  evidence  to  be  laid  before  the 
State's  Attorney  in  the  campaign  against  pandering. 

Result  of  Article  est  "McClures." 

"Mr.  Kraus  said  he  and  others  had  been  investigating  this 
traffic  for  almost  three  years,  and  that  the  law  on  the  statute- 
books  now  was  a  result  of  exposures  that  came  three  years  ago 
in  an  article  printed  in  McClure's  Magazine*  This  dealt  with 
the  Jewish  phase  of  conditions,  and  was  the  first  information 
that  Jews  in  Chicago  had  that  members  of  their  race  were 
engaged  in  this  illegal  traffic. 

' '  Mr.  Kraus  and  others  questioned  the  article  and  asked  the 
author  to  submit  proof  or  apologize.  Proof  was  forthcoming, 
said  Mr.  Kraus,  and  the  fight  has  been  on  ever  since,  and  is 
to  be  broadened  now  so  as  to  take  in  all  denominations. 

"  'The  article  appearing  in  McChire's,'  said  Mr.  Kraus, 
'  came  as  a  shock  to  us.  Two  years  ago  a  bill  was  drafted  and 
sent  to  the  legislature  as  the  first  move  to  remedy  conditions. 
This  measure  was  finally  passed  upon  by  Judge  Mack,  Samuel 
Alschuler,  and  myself.  I  went  down  to  Springfield,  and,  with 
the  assistance  of  Speaker  Shurtleff,  it  was  pushed  through  the 
legislature. 


*"The   City   of   Chicago,"    by   George   Kibbe   Turner,    published   in 
McClure's  Magazine  for  April,  1907. 


54  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

"There  was  no  law  on  the  books  then  whereby  it  was  pos- 
sible to  punish  those  who  engaged  in  so-called  white  slavery. 
The  law  as  it  has  been  amended  is  more  severe  now  than  it  was 
as  originally  enacted.  As  there  was  no  law  at  the  time,  we 
were  afraid  to  make  it  too  severe  for  fear  the  legislature  might 
reject  it. 

"  'In  two  years  the  people  became  educated  to  the  gravity 
of  the  situation,  and  it  was  made  more  severe  by  the  last 
legislature  by  amendments. 

' '  '  There  is  a  movement  now  on  foot  by  different  organiza- 
tions, regardless  of  creed,  to  stamp  out  this  traffic  in  Chicago. 
The  Jews  have  prided  themselves  upon  the  chastity  of  their 
women  and  their  moral  family  life;  and  when  the  article  in 
McClure's  Magazine  came  out,  many  felt  that  it  ought  not  to 
be  talked  about  and  thereby  made  to  give  more  publicity  and 
possibly  create  prejudice.  Better  judgment  prevailed  after- 
ward, and  it  is  the  universal  opinion  that  those  who  profit 
by  such  practices  must  be  punished. '  ' ' 

"Name  of  God  and  Jew  Profaned  as  Never  Before." 

Dr.  Emil  G.  Hirsch,  preaching  at  the  Sinai  Temple  in  Chi- 
cago on  September  25,  1909,  on  the  Jewish  connection  with 
the  traffic  in  women,  said : 

"We  have  learned  in  a  recent  infamous  trial  that  rich 
men  in  our  race  are  profiting  through  leasing  their  property 
for  purposes  of  evil. 

"You  who  are  here  to-day  have,  many  of  you,  given  largely 
of  your  money  for  charities,  but  now  a  crisis  has  arisen  that 
makes  it  needful  that  you  give  more  than  money.  You  must 
give  of  your  souls  to  regenerate  those  of  our  race  who  have 
allowed  their  ideals  to  be  lowered. 

"Over  on  the  West  Side,  the  worst  thing  has  occurred  that 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  55 

has  ever  happened  to  our  race.    The  name  of  God  and  Jew 
has  been  profaned  as  never  before." 

The  "  Forward  "on  Jewish  White  Slave  Traders. 

The  Forward  made  a  special  investigation  of  the  matter, 
and  devoted  a  large  amount  of  its  space  to  the  situation.  In 
an  editorial  it  said: 

"The  facts  that  were  uncovered  at  the  trial  of  Inspector 
McCann  are  horrifying.  Seventy-five  per  cent,  of  the  white 
slave  trade  in  Chicago  is  in  Jewish  hands.  The  owners  of  most 
of  the  immoral  resorts  on  the  "West  Side  are  Jews.  Even  in 
Gentile  neighborhoods  Jews  stand  out  prominently  in  this 
nefarious  business. 

"The  shame  would  not  be  so  overwhelming  if  the  thing 
stopped  there.  For,  after  all,  we  could  say:  'What  can  we 
do  if  such  creatures  persist  in  calling  themselves  Jews  ? '  But 
we  could  say  this  only  if  these  outcasts  had  remained  where 
they  belong,  and  had  no  standing  in  the  Jewish  community 
of  this  city.  When  these  men,  however,  fill  public  offices  in 
the  Jewish  community,  when  they  parade  and  are  designated 
as  model  citizens  in  certain  quarters  of  the  Jewish  population, 
we  no  longer  can  remain  on  the  defensive. 

"One  of  these  'prominent'  Jews  is  Julius  Frank.  Julius 
Frank  confessed  openly  that  he  is  the  owner  of  a  number  of 
disorderly  houses.  He  confessed  that  he  paid  protection 
money  to  the  police  so  that  his  houses  might  not  be  raided. 

"This  creature,  this  Julius  Frank,  is  president  of  the  Con- 
gregation Anshe  Calvaria,  Twelfth  and  Union  Streets. 

"Julius  Frank,  self-confessed  owner  of  disorderly  houses, 
is  the  head  of  a  Jewish  congregation ! 

"Can  you,  Jews  of  Chicago,  conceive  it  fully?  A  Jewish 
synagogue,  a  holy  temple,  which  should  be  the  cleanest,  the 


56  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

loftiest,  the  most  beautiful  place  and  institution  in  our  lives — 
such  an  institution  gives  away  its  most  honorable  rank  and 
post  to  a  man  who  lives  on  the  money  earned  by  running  dis- 
orderly houses!" 

San  Francisco's  Riot  of  Vice  and  Crime. 

The  situation  in  San  Francisco  was  shown  by  George  Ken- 
nan  's  description  of  the  municipal  scandals  there,  published  in 
McClure's  Magazine  in  November,  1907: 

1 '  The  entire  government  of  the  city,  therefore,  fell  into  the 
hands  of  blackmailers,  extortioners,  and  thieves ;  and  the  cor- 
ruption affected  the  whole  body  of  citizens  simply  because  the 
whole  body  of  citizens  was  brought  directly  into  contact 
with  it. 

"Under  the  rule  of  Schmitz  and  Ruef,  men  were  forced  to 
pay  for  protection  and  privileges  which  they  ought  to  have 
had  without  payment;  the  work  of  the  city  was  badly  done 
or  wholly  neglected;  and  professional  law-breakers  could  buy 
the  right  to  commit  almost  any  crime  short  of  burglary,  high- 
way robbery,  and  murder. 

"In  consequence  of  this  exercise  of  unlimited  power  for 
selfish  purposes,  by  an  unscrupulous  municipal  bureaucracy, 
the  credit  of  the  city  was  impaired;  vice  and  crime,  in  their 
most  dangerous  forms,  were  encouraged  or  protected;  thou- 
sands of  boys  and  girls  were  tempted  into  evil  courses;  life 
and  property  became  insecure;  and  the  moral  standards  of 
the  whole  community  were  gradually  lowered  and  debased. 

"Ruef,  Schmitz,  and  their  confederates  not  only  robbed 
San  Francisco ;  they  debauched  it  as  well,  because  they  made 
graft,  bribery,  and  vice  so  common  and  so  familiar  that 
they  seemed  almost  to  be  normal  features  of  business  and 
social  life. 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  57 

'"At  that  time,  according  to  Police  Captain  Mooney,  the 
area  of  the  Tenderloin  had  greatly  increased. 

"The  saloons'  generally,  had  thrown  off  all  restraints  of 
law,  brothels,  gambling  dens,  and  assignation  houses  multi- 
plied and  nourished  under  administrative  protection ;  women 
lured  men  to  'dives'  and  'deadfalls'  and  assisted  in  the  work 
of  drugging  and  robbing  them;  charges  brought  against 
law-breakers  were  dismissed,  or  indefinitely  postponed, 
by  the  Police  Commission  and  the  police  courts; 
honest  officers  who  tried  to  enforce  the  laws  were  trans- 
ferred to  quiet  and  unimportant  resident  districts;  nickelo- 
deons, disreputable  theatres,  and  penny  arcardes  corrupted 
the  young;  street-walking  prostitutes  intercepted  even  men 
who  were  on  their  way  to  church  and  gave  them  cards ;  drunk- 
enness, immorality,  and  dissipation  in  every  form  became 
common;  all-night  drug-stores  sold  opium,  morphine,  and 
chloral  without  regulation  or  restraint;  and  the  number  of 
'drug  fiends'  in  the  city  increased  to  about  eight  thousand." 

Cities — Americans'  Danger  Point. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  go  beyond  the  examples  of  these  three 
well-known  cities.  The  same  political  forces  engaged  in  de- 
grading civilization  into  barbarism  are  at  work  with  general 
success  in  all  the  larger  cities  of  the  country.  The  fight 
against  them  is  the  greatest  single  governmental  problem  of 
to-day.  As  Bishop  Potter  well  said,  there  is  absolutely  noth- 
ing on  earth  similar  to  the  degraded  rule  in  American  cities. 
Many  nations  and  cities  have  races  of  inferior  breed  or  train- 
ing among  their  population,  but  nowhere  else  is  the  control 
of  the  government  taken  over  by  criminals,  organized  to 
break  the  law,  for  the  purpose  of  exploiting  the  appetite  and 
criminal  weaknesses  of  such  populations  for  their  own  profit. 


58  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  stock  of  the  immigrants  entering  the 
United  States,  and  especially  its  cities,  is  growing  constantly 
worse.  Drawn  first  from  the  higher  and  more  intelligent 
types  of  northwestern  Europe,  our  immigration  has  degener- 
ated constantly  to  the  poorest  breeds  of  the  eastern  and  south- 
ern sections  of  the  continent.  We  have  made  the  United 
States  an  asylum  for  the  oppressed  and  incompetent  of  all 
nations,  and  have  put  the  government  into  the  hands  of  the 
inmates  of  the  asylum.  "We  are  now  permitting  the  country 
to  become  the  Botany  Bay  of  the  world.  The  most  incom- 
petent and  vicious  settle  down  in  our  great  cities;  and  there 
an  army  of  political  criminals,  like  Tammany,  trained  by  half 
a  century  of  political  crime,  exploit,  and  degrade,  and  corrupt 
them,  and  with  them  our  whole  civilization. 

The  Insecurity  of  Human  Life. 

The  results  of  this  degradation  of  society  cannot  be  traced 
in  all  things,  but  where  they  are  observable  they  show  startling 
results.  One  point  that  can  be  clearly  seen  is  the  comparative 
insecurity  of  human  life  against  murder. 

Twenty-five  years  ago  D.  Appleton  &  Company  published  a 
Cyclopedia  of  Biography  which  contained  14,243  names  of 
the  most  eminent  Americans,  the  names  of  the  men  who  had 
laid  the  foundations  of  the  United  States  and  had  fought 
through  the  Civil  War.  Of  these  14,243  names  northwestern 
Europe  contributed  14,219;  the  English-speaking  sections  of 
it  contributed  12,519 — that  is,  all  but  1,724.  At  this  time — in 
1884 — the  annual  murder  rate  of  the  United  States  was  26.7 
per  million  inhabitants;  that  is,  there  were  1,465  murders 
for  nearly  55,000,000  inhabitants.  As  years  went  by  the 
murder  rate  increased  with  frightful  rapidity,  reaching  its 
maximum  in  1895,  when  152  people  per  million  per  annum 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  59 

were  murdered.  Since  that  time  the  average  has  run  consid- 
erably over  100  per  million  per  annum.  The  extraordinary- 
prevalence  of  murder  in  the  United  States  now  as  compared 
with  twenty-eight  years  ago  is  shown  by  the  following  table 
of  homicides  compiled  annually  for  that  period  by  the  Chi- 
cago Tribune. 

1881,    1,266  1895,  10,500 

1882,    1,467  1896,  10,652 

1883,    1,697  1897,  9,520 

1884,    1,465  1898,  7,840 

1885,    1,808  1899,  6,225 

1886,    1,499  1900,  8,275 

1887,    2,335  1901,  7,852 

1888,    2,184  1902,  8,834 

1889,    3,567  1903,  8,976 

1890,    4,290  1904,  8,482 

1891,    5,906  1905,  9,212 

1892,    6,791  1906,  9,360 

1893,    6,615  1907,  8,712 

1894,    9,800  1908,  8,952 

Our  Huge  Murder  Rate. 

The  immigration  of  people  from  sections  of  southern  and 
eastern  Europe,  noted  for  their  high  murder  rate,  had  much 
to  do  with  this  condition.  But  still  more  potent  is  the  fact 
that,  once  in  this  country,  the  criminal  element  among  these 
immigrants  is  protected  by,  and  strongly  allied  with,  the 
political  criminals  who  manage  our  cities.  Among  the  Italians 
of  New  York,  for  example,  murder  is  less  dangerous  to  the 
murdered,  on  the  average,  than  the  stealing  of  a  five-dollar 
bill  by  a  clerk  from  his  employer.     If  the  murderer  is  ar- 


60  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

rested,  he  is  rarely  convicted.  The  operation  of  the  coroner's 
court  in  New  York  in  dealing  with  the  average  murder  is  one 
of  the  ghastliest  travesties  of  justice  in  human  government. 

As  a  result  of  all  this,  the  murder  rate  in  the  United  States 
is  from  ten  to  twenty  times  greater  than  the  murder  rate  of 
the  British  Empire  and  other  worthwestern  European  coun- 
tries. The  northwestern  countries  of  Europe,  which  are  the 
only  nations  worthy  of  comparison  with  the  United  States  in 
their  civilization,  would  require  nearly  a  billion  inhabitants 
— that  is,  more  than  half  of  the  population  of  the  world — 
in  order  to  bring  the  number  of  their  murders  up  to  that  of 
the  United  States,  with  its  eighty  to  ninety  millions  of  popu- 
lation. Canada  would  require  a  billion  and  a  quarter  to  have 
as  many  murders  as  the  United  States  has  at  the  present  time. 
Murder  has  increased  many  times  as  rapidly  as  population 
for  the  last  twenty-five  years.  During  the  past  fifteen  years 
the  number  of  murders  in  the  United  States  has  been,  ac- 
cording to  the  annual  records  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  133,192. 
The  entire  number  of  men  in  the  Union  army  who  were  killed 
in  battle  or  died  of  wounds  was  110,070;  in  both  the  Union 
and  Confederate  forces  it  was  183,348. 

Fourteen  Times  as  Many  Judges  as  in  England. 

This  insecurity  of  life  in  the  United  States  is  but  one  in- 
dication of  the  lapse  from  civilization  that  the  whole  popula- 
tion is  suffering,  as  a  result  of  its  government  by  criminals. 
The  huge  size  of  our  machinery  of  justice  is  certainly  due  in 
large  part  to  the  amount  of  crime  it  has  to  deal  with.  New 
York  and  Illinois  have  together  a  population  under  14,- 
000,000;  these  two  States  require  572  judges  in  their  courts. 
England  and  Wales  have  a  population  of  about  32,000,000; 
over  this  population  there  are  92  judges  of  the  same  general 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  61 

rank  as  that  of  the  572  who  serve  in  New  York  and  Illinois 
— that  is,  the  two  American  States  have  about  fourteen  times 
as  many  judges  in  proportion  to  their  population  as  England 
and  "Wales. 

Taft  and  Eliot  on  American  Lawlessness. 

The  great  excess  of  crime  in  this  country  over  that  in  other 
civilized  lands  is  recognized  by  all  students  of  American  life. 
President  Taft,  speaking  in  Chicago  on  September  16  of  this 
year,  said: 

"  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  administration  of  crimi- 
nal law  in  this  country  is  a  disgrace  to  our  civilization,  and 
that  the  prevalence  of  crime  and  fraud,  which  here  is  greatly 
in  excess  of  that  in  the  European  countries,  is  due  largely  to 
the  failure  of  the  law  and  its  administrators  to  bring  criminals 
to  justice." 

Ex-President  Charles  W.  Eliot  of  Harvard  University  said 
in  New  York  on  December  16,  1908 : 

""We  are  to  consider  how  American  freedom  has  made  pos- 
sible lawlessness  in  many  forms.  The  defenses  of  society 
against  criminals  have  broken  down.  The  impunity  with 
which  crimes  of  violence  are  committed  is  a  disgrace  to  the 
country." 

These  conditions  have  arisen  chiefly  for  one  reason:  our 
large  cities  and  many  of  our  States  are  governed  by  organized 
criminals.  But  back  of  this  more  obvious  lapse  toward  barbar- 
ism is  a  second  still  greater  though  less  obvious  disintegration 
of  society,  due  to  the  same  forces  that  were  responsible  for  the 
first.  Speaking  broadly,  the  excessive  use  of  alcohol  and  the 
presence  of  venereal  disease  are  the  two  greatest  dangers  of 
the  country  to-day.  The  slum  politicians,  who,  through  their 
delivery  of  great  numbers  of  votes,  have  a  controlling  grip 


62  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

in  the  administration  of  law  in  cities,  have  for  years  drawn 
their  chief  revenue  from  the  saturation  of  the  population  with 
liquor  and  the  promotion  of  the  public  prostitution  of  women. 
To-day  they  are,  as  Mr.  Turner 's  article  clearly  shows,  almost 
exclusively  responsible  for  the  "white  slave"  trade  in  the 
United  States.  If  they  did  not  arrange  to  break  down  the 
laws  of  civilization  to  allow  a  market  for  the  bodies  of  young 
girls,  these  girls  would  never  be  sold. 

Two  Chief  Dangers  op  Civilization. 

Alcohol,  as  is  well  known,  has  filled  our  poor-houses,  insane 
asylums,  and  prisons  for  fifty  and  a  hundred  years.  But  the 
proportions  of  the  other  great  danger  to  our  population  are 
little  appreciated.  An  excellent  and  authoritative  statement 
of  this  danger  may  be  secured  from  the  carefully  edited  book, 
' '  A  Report  on  Our  National  Vitality, ' '  compiled  by  Professor 
Irving  Fisher,  and  published  by  the  United  States  Government 
in  1909.  In  this  Dr.  Prince  A.  Morrow,  the  famous  specialist, 
is  quoted  as  follows: 

' '  The  extermination  of  social  diseases  would  probably  mean 
the  elimination  of  at  least  one-half  our  institutions  for  de- 
fectives." 

Dr.  Morrow  further  says  that  the  number  of  syphilitics 
alone  in  the  United  States  has  been  estimated  at  2,000,000, 
and,  finally,  makes  this  terrible  assertion:  "Possibly  ten  per 
cent,  of  men  who  marry  infect  their  wives  with  venereal  dis- 
ease. ' ' 

The  worst  punishment  of  a  mutinous  regiment  in  the  time 
of  Rome  was  decimation — a  word  that  has  passed  into  our 
language  as  a  term  for  fearful  punishment.  By  this,  one 
soldier  in  ten  was  chosen  by  lot  to  be  killed.  According  to 
Dr.  Morrow's  estimate,  decimation  by  venereal  disease  is  now 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  63 

taking  place  among  the  wives  of  America;  that  is,  one  out 
of  every  ten  innocent  women  who  are  married  is  destined  to 
be  affected  with  diseases  as  frightful  in  their  consequences  as 
leprosy. 

Across  the  entire  United  States  a  standing  army  of  tens  of 
thousands  of  cadets  and  prostitutes,  practically  all  of  them 
diseased,  is  maintained  by  the  politicians  of  its  large  cities 
for  the  perennial  infection  of  the  population.  An  army  of 
lepers  of  equal  size  would  be  far  less  dangerous.  The  very 
existence  of  the  present  force  demonstrates  that  it  is  daily 
infecting  thousands  of  people  with  one  of  the  most  terrible 
diseases  known  to  medicine. 

The  Waste  op  Human  Lives. 

It  is  the  fashion  of  the  time  to  place  the  chief  emphasis  in 
the  fight  for  better  city  government  upon  financial  considera- 
tions. The  real  consideration  is  far  deeper  than  this.  The 
cities  of  the  United  States  are  not  concerned  merely  with  the 
stealing  of  a  few  millions  of  dollars  by  political  thieves :  they 
are  fighting  for  their  civilization.  The  Evening  Post  of  New 
York  on  September  27,  1909,  stated  this  excellently  in  re- 
sponse to  the  announcement  of  Otto  T.  Bannard,  the  Repub- 
lican candidate  for  Mayor,  that  the  fight  against  Tammany 
Hall  was  to  be  conducted  on  a  business  issue.    It  said : 

"Mr.  Bannard  defines  the  anti-Tammany  issue  as  'waste.' 
Waste  there  is,  but  the  waste  of  money,  grave  as  it  may  be, 
is  the  least  part.  It  is  the  waste  of  human  lives  that  appalls — 
the  consumptives  in  the  'lug  blocks,'  dying  in  dark,  inside 
rooms,  the  waste  of  children  in  partly  inspected  rattle-trap 
tenements,  the  waste  of  womanhood  and  manhood  that  comes 
with  a  'wide-open'  town.  No,  Mr.  Bannard.  The  chief  issue 
is  Tammany  Hall  in  all  its  unspeakable  vileness;  with  all  its 


64  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

smattering  of  respectables  to  lend  the  cloak  of  virtue,  chock- 
a-block  with  the  Sullivans,  with  panderers  to  vice  and  vile- 
ness  of  every  description ;  with  its  rich  treasury  lined  by  con- 
tributions of  corrupt  or  cowed  corporations,  of  brothels  and 
saloons,  of  all  the  powers  that  prey,  and  also  from  the  edu- 
cated rich  who  pay  for  office  or  for  immunity.  The  issue  is 
Tammany  itself,  because  it  is  still,  as  for  one  hundred  years 
past,  a  league  of  men  banded  together  by  the  '  cohesive  power 
of  public  plunder,'  without  conscience,  without  a  spark  of 
civic  pride  or  patriotism,  like  Eichard  Croker,  working  for 
their  pockets  all  the  time.  The  issue  is  Tammany,  because  it 
is  a  veritable  Juggernaut,  crushing  beneath  its  wheels  the 
prostrate  poor  it  pretends  to  succor  and  befriend.  A  monster 
of  hypocrisy  and  greed,  it  is  a  disgrace  to  the  city,  a  double 
disgrace  to  the  nation  under  whose  flag  it  flourishes.  There 
is  but  one  issue,  and  that  is  whether  the  Imperial  City  shall 
be  in  chains  to  Tammany." 

American  Cities  Made  Partners  With  Criminals. 

Besides  the  convincing  statements  of  the  late  Bishop  Potter, 
Charles  W.  Eliot,  President  Emeritus  of  Harvard  University, 
the  President  of  the  United  States,  the  Committee  of  Fifteen, 
and  of  other  authorities,  we  invite  the  readers  of  this  article 
to  weigh  carefully  the  few  points  in  which  statistics  enable 
us  to  understand  the  present  conditions  of  the  United  States, 
and  to  compare  ourselves  with  other  nations:  The  fact  that 
murders  are  ten  times  as  frequent  in  the  United  States  as  in 
other  civilized  countries;  the  fact  that  in  the  last  thirteen 
years  the  deaths  by  murder  in  the  United  States  have  equaled 
the  entire  losses  by  death  or  wounds  of  the  Northern  armies 
in  the  entire  four  years  of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion;  that 
more  than  ten  times  as  many  judges  are  required  in  the 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  65 

United  States  as  in  England  to  administer  justice;  and  that 
the  white  slave  trade,  pressing  the  sale  of  women  to  its  ulti- 
mate point,  has  incidentally  and  enormously  spread  the  most 
terrible  diseases. 

But,  above  all,  it  must  be  remembered  that  these  condi- 
tions exist  primarily  because  dominating  factors  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  most  of  the  large  cities  of  the  United  States  are 
men  engaged  in  the  propagation  of  crime  and  in  pandering  to 
vice.  This  is  true  in  no  other  civilized  country  in  the  world. 
There  is  crime  in  all  countries,  and  the  white  slave  traffic 
exists  everywhere,  but  this  is  the  only  country  in  which  this 
traffic  is  supported  by  the  political  forces  that  govern  cities. 
It  is  the  only  country  in  which  honest  policemen  have  every- 
thing to  fear  in  enforcing  the  law,  and  in  which  the  police  in 
general  are  engaged  in  degrading  the  communities  that  they 
are  supposed  to  serve.  It  is  principally  the  result  of  this 
fact  that  the  white  slave  trade,  with  all  its  unnamable  cruel- 
ties and  atrocities,  has  become  so  fastened  upon  the  United 
States.  Under  normal  conditions,  with  such  government  as 
the  cities  of  the  United  States  have  a  right  to  expect,  the 
number  of  prostitutes  in  the  country  would  decrease  by  two- 
thirds.  It  is  a  crowning  shame  to  American  democracy  that 
while  the  white  slave  trade  is  being  driven  by  the  authorities 
of  the  entire  world,  including  the  pioneer  countries  of  South- 
ern Africa  and  South  America,  it  is  growing  and  fattening 
in  the  United  States,  with  the  connivance  of  the  authorities  of 
our  cities  themselves. 

What  Are  the  Churches  Going  to  Do  About  It? 

The  Christian  World  of  September  25  makes  this  pertinent 
comment  upon  the  situation  in  New  York : 
"It  is  a  sad  thing  to  hear  such  words  as  those  of  a  Japan- 


66  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ese  recently  spoken  to  a  friend  of  the  writer.  He  said: 
'Christianity  is  greatly  discounted  in  Japan  because  of  its 
seeming  impotency  in  your  own  country.'  He  then  referred 
to  the  corrupt  and  pagan  condition  of  our  own  cities,  remark- 
ing that  the  missionary  was  completely  handicapped  in  Japan 
by  these  revelations  of  the  impotency  of  Christianity  to  re- 
deem the  so-called  Christian  countries  from  paganism.  We 
presume  he  had  been  reading  the  Survey,  with  the  disclosure 
of  the  inhuman  social  practices  of  Pittsburg,  and  the  recent 
numbers  of  McClure's  Magazine  and  Hampton's  Magazine, 
with  their  articles  by  General  Bingham  on  the  misgovernment 
of  New  York.  General  Bingham  has  stirred  the  whole  coun- 
try by  revealing  the  secrets  of  his  office.  His  contention  that 
New  York  is  governed  by  a  band  of  professional  criminals  he 
substantiates  from  incontrovertible  proofs  of  his  own  experi- 
ence as  Police  Commissioner.  There  is  no  doubt  in  many 
people's  minds  that  he  was  deposed  from  office  because  he 
would  not  fall  in  with  the  corrupt  political  schemes  of  some 
party  boss.  "We  cannot  quote  from  him  here,  but  would  ad- 
vise everybody,  especially  every  citizen  of  New  York,  to  read 
these  articles.  As  the  Mayoralty  campaign  approaches,  the 
question  becomes  vital  to  the  churches  of  New  York,  as  well 
as  the  people.  What  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about 
New  York?  Are  there  not  enough  members  of  church  and 
synagogue  to  lift  the  city  out  of  this  slough  of  iniquity  ?  The 
New  York  State  Conference  of  Religion  is  striving  to  unite 
the  leaders  of  all  denominations  in  such  a  campaign  as  has 
never  been  seen  in  the  city.  We  wish  that  every  minister 
might  use  every  moment  in  pulpit  and  out  in  arousing  people 
to  the  pagan  condition  of  the  city.  If  he  is  not  already  on 
fire  with  indignations,  let  him  read  General  Bingham's  arti- 
cles." 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  67 

There  is  one  thing  that  will  change  this,  and  one  only. 
The  local  government  of  cities  must  be  taken  from  the  hands 
of  criminals  and  purveyors  of  vice.  This  is  perfectly  obivious. 
The  reason  it  has  not  yet  been  done  is  that  the  American 
people  have  never  concentrated  their  attention  on  this  one 
main  issue.  The  best  forces  in  our  life  have,  in  fact,  scattered 
their  energies  disastrously.  The  cities  of  the  United  States 
are  filled  to  overflowing  with  organizations  of  all  kinds  to 
oppose  crime  and  to  dispense  aid  to  the  masses  of  criminals 
and  unfortunates  who  are  created  by  present  conditions ;  law 
and  order  societies,  temperance  organizations,  college  settle- 
ments, committees  to  put  down  the  traffic  of  women.  All 
these  work  well  and  earnestly,  but  their  efforts  are  either  the 
work  of  salvage,  after  the  great  damage  is  done,  or,  at  most, 
attempts  at  a  very  partial  cure.  They  assist  the  popula- 
tion in  very  much  the  same  way  that  a  servant  might  who 
was  hired  to  drive  away  the  flies  from  the  table  of  a  dinner- 
party set  upon  the  edge  of  a  cesspool.  What  our  country 
needs  is,  not  more  societies  to  remove  flies,  but  the  removal  of 
the  cesspool. 

The  Eemedy — City  Government  by  Commission. 

For  this,  it  is  only  necessary  to  concentrate  the  attention 
and  interest  of  the  whole  public  upon  the  one  main  issue — 
local  government.  This  will  take  place  just  as  soon  as  the 
general  public  is  given  a  clean-cut  understanding  of  present 
conditions,  and  the  power  to  see  that  these  are  changed. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  silly  talk  about  city  populations  not 
wanting  decent  city  government.  This  is  exactly  equivalent 
to  saying  that  the  aggregate  of  individuals  in  a  community 
desire  to  be  robbed,  murdered,  and  have  their  daughters  sold 
as  prostitutes.    The  real  trouble  is  that  under  present  forms 


68  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

of  city  government  the  general  public  can  never  know  the 
truth,  and,  if  it  does,  it  can  almost  invariably  be  defrauded 
of  its  power  to  express  its  will.  The  necessity  of  the  time  is 
not  an  incentive  for  a  change,  but  a  system  of  local  govern- 
ment for  cities  that  will  do  two  things :  first,  give  an  intelli- 
gent idea  of  the  management  of  city  affairs;  and,  second, 
allow  the  public  to  express  its  will  accurately  and  subject  to 
no  change. 

Exactly  such  a  system  has  been  developed  and  well  tested 
in  America  during  the  past  ten  years.  It  is  called  the  Gal- 
veston or  Des  Moines  plan  of  commission  government.*  In 
reality  it  is  merely  New  England  town  government  by  select- 
men— the  most  famous  and  successful  single  development  of 
democracy  in  America — adapted  to  the  use  of  the  city.  This 
system  elects  a  board  of  five  or  six  members  from  a  city  at 
large,  and  gives  them  the  entire  power  of  government;  each 
member  is  given  charge  of  one  of  several  general  divisions 
of  the  government.  In  this  way  the  best  specialists  in  the 
population  are  chosen  to  manage  the  big  departments  of  the 
city,  such  as  finance,  streets,  and  police.  There  is  no  shirk- 
ing or  shifting  of  responsibility;  one  well-known  man  is  al- 
ways responsible  for  one  department.  And  careful  and  con- 
cise reports  show  the  public  periodically  just  what  is  being 
done. 

This  movement,  starting  with  Galveston,  Texas,  is  sweeping 
across  the  West  and  Southwest,  and  a  large  group  of  cities 
have  already  adopted  the  new  governmental  plan,  including 


*A  complete  description  of  government  by  commission  was  published 
by  Mr.  Turner  in  McClure's  Magazine  for  October,  1906.  This  article 
has  been  frequently  republished  in  pamphlets  and  newspapers,  by  per- 
mission of  the  magazine. 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  69 

such  large  cities  as  Kansas  City,  Kansas,  which  has  already 
put  it  into  operation,  and  Memphis,  Tennessee,  which  is  about 
to  do  so. 

New  York  City,  under  such  a  system,  could  command  the 
services  of  the  ablest  men  in  the  United  States ;  a  position  in 
its  government  would  offer  not  only  one  of  the  greatest  honors 
in  the  United  States,  but  a  salary  as  large  as  those  paid  by  the 
greatest  corporations  in  America.  The  entire  government 
of  the  city,  excepting  only  the  judiciary,  would  be  given  over 
to  five  men.  The  second  greatest  city  the  world  would  not  be 
governed,  as  now,  by  an  association  of  criminals ;  it  could  and 
naturally  would  expect  to  secure  the  direction  of  a  board  of 
men  of  the  caliber  of  the  following  ticket. 

Mayor,  Theodore  Roosevelt. 

Commissioner  of  Finance,  J.  Pierport  Morgan. 

Commissioner  of  Police,  General  Leonard  Wood. 

Commissioner  of  Public  "Work,  William  G.  McAdoo,  the 
builder  of  the  Hudson  Tunnels. 

Commissioner  of  Law,  Senator  Elihu  Eoot. 

A  board  of  men  of  this  ability,  according  to  the  experience 
of  other  cities,  could  be  elected  by  an  overwhelming  vote  to 
take  charge  of  New  York  City.  Once  elected,  they  would  not 
only  save  it  millions  of  dollars,  but  would  entirely  change 
the  quality  of  its  civilization. 

It  is  clear  that  some  change  must  take  place  soon  in  the 
government  of  American  cities,  if  we  are  to  retain  the  quality 
of  our  civilization.  Many  careless  and  indifferent  persons 
may  choose  to  doubt  this.  Any  one  who  wishes  a  clear  under- 
standing of  the  barbarism  of  the  forces  that  dominate  the 
present  management  of  our  cities  need  only  read  such  articles 
as  the  autobiography  of  Judge  Ben  Lindsey,  now  running  in 
Everybody's  Magazine,  showing  typical  municipal  conditions 


70  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

in  Denver ;  or  those  of  Mr.  Turner  on  Chicago,  published  by 
us  in  April,  1907,  and  on  New  York  in  June,  1909;  and, 
finally,  that  on  "The  Daughters  of  the  Poor"  in  the  present 
magazine.  The  valuable  reform  that  Mr.  Turner's  first  article 
started  in  Chicago  has  already  been  shown.  The  present 
article  is  printed  in  the  hope  that  it  may  lead  to  a  movement 
of  national  scope  against  the  vilest  and  most  dangerous  growth 
of  present  conditions  in  America  which  it  describes.  Only  by 
the  most  thorough  and  revolutionary  reforms  along  this  line 
is  there  hope  for  the  future  American  democracy. 


"This  lovely  land,  this  glorious  liberty,  the  dear  purchase 
of  our  fathers,  are  ours ;  ours  to  enjoy,  ours  to  preserve,  ours 
to  transmit.  Generations  past  and  generations  to  come  hold 
us  responsible  for  the  sacred  trust.  Our  fathers  from  behind 
admonish  us  with  their  anxious  paternal  voices ;  posterity  calls 
out  to  us  from  the  bosom  of  the  future ;  the  world  turns  hither 
its  solicitous  eye — all,  all  conjure  us  to  act  wisely  and  faith- 
fully in  the  relation  which  we  sustain." — Webster. 

Can  any  man  read  this  article,  which  in  truth  puts  the  sit- 
uation mildly,  and  not  realize  that  we  have  reached  the 
greatest  crisis  in  the  history  of  our  country.  "We  are  stand- 
ing at  the  threshold  of  the  most  important  decision  a  people 
ever  made.  Whether  we  will  continue  to  allow  these  political 
thieves,  murderers,  and  despoilers  of  our  homes,  rule  us,  and 
sell  us  body  and  soul  at  will,  or  whether  the  good  men  of  the 
country  will  prove  themselves  loyal  and  courageous  enough 
to  demand  a  political  separation  from  these  political  vultures 
who  are  ready  to  prey  upon  any  who  may  be  considered  val- 
uable game. 

Men  of  America,  if  we  are  going  to  be  redeemed  from  these 


The  White  Slave  Trade.  71 

terrible  conditions,  you  must  be  willing,  if  necessary,  to  cut 
loose  from  political  parties  under  whose  name  and  protection 
such  men  as  Mr.  McClure  describes,  have  been  able  to  secure 
and  maintain  the  control  of  the  government,  from  Washing- 
ton down  to  these  great  cess-pools  of  crime,  and  injustice, 
called  cities.  Which  do  you  love  more,  the  name  of  a  political 
party,  or  your  country's  redemption  from  these  terrible  con- 
ditions of  shame? 

If  we  are  to  redeem  and  save  our  blood  bought  civilization, 
every  man  who  loves  the  truth  and  right,  let  stand  up  and  be 
counted  at  the  ballot  box,  and  be  sure  that  he  does  not  vote 
for  men  or  parties  who  are  known  to  train  with  these  gangs 
of  thieves  and  murderers.  If  it  means  severing  your  con- 
nections with  a  political  party  with  which  you  have  long  affil- 
iated, be  brave  and*true  enough  to  break  away  at  any  cost. 
Unless  men  are  willing  to  do  this,  we  are  destined  to  remain 
the  captives  of  the  political  thieves  who  have  been  selling  us 
out,  body  and  soul,  home  and  country,  until  good  men  gasp 
with  fear  as  they  recognize  the  conditions  of  our  time. 

Every  citizen  must  value  his  ballot  as  a  sacred  trust ;  a  holy 
weapon  of  war  to  be  used  for  the  defense  of  the  people  and 
the  redemption  of  his  country  from  the  hands  of  the  spoilers. 
He  must  remember  it  ought  not  to  be  sold  to  the  highest  po- 
litical bidder,  whose  only  purpose  in  buying  it,  is  to  manipu- 
late it  for  his  own  gain,  no  matter  how  much  he  may  rob 
others  of  their  just  due.  Every  good  man  must  consider  it  to 
be  his  duty  to  vote,  remembering  his  ballot  may  be  needed 
to  kill  the  power  of  some  bum  or  thief;  political  grafter  and 
slave  trader. 

If  the  manhood  of  the  nation  will  assert  itself  we  may  be 
saved  from  moral  decay  and  civic  destruction.  If  not,  we  are 
doomed,  and  the  end  is  not  far  away. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE  DAUGHTERS  OF  THE  POOR. 


A  Plain  Story  of  the  Development  op  New  York  City  as 

a  Leading  Center  op  the  White  Slave  Trade 

op  the  World,  Under  Tammany  Hall. 


By  George  Eibbe  Turner. 

The  test  of  civilization  is  the  estimate  of  woman — 
George  William  Curtis. 

There  are  now  three  principal  centers  of  the  so-called  white 
slave  trade — that  is,  the  recruiting  and  sale  of  young  girls 
of  the  poorer  classes  by  procurers.  The  first  is  the  group 
of  cities  in  Austrian  and  Russian  Poland,  headed  by  Lemberg ; 
the  second  is  Paris;  and  the  third  the  city  of  New  York. 
In  the  past  ten  years  New  York  has  become  the  leader  of  the 
world  in  this  class  of  enterprise.  The  men  engaged  in  it 
there  have  taken  or  shipped  girls,  largely  obtained  from  the 
tenement  districts  of  New  York,  to  every  continent  on  the 
globe;  they  are  now  doing  business  with  Central  and  South 
America,  Africa,  and  Asia.  They  are  driving  all  competitors 
before  them  in  North  America.  And  they  have  established, 
directly  or  indirectly,  recruiting  systems  in  every  large  city 
of  the  United  States. 

The  story  of  the  introduction  of  this  European  business 
into  New  York,  under  the  protection  of  the  Tammany  Hall 
political  organization,  its  extension  from  there  through  the 

72 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  73 

United  States,  and  its  shipments  of  women  to  the  four  corners 
of  the  earth,  is  a  strange  one.  It  would  seem  incredible  if  it 
were  not  thoroughly  substantiated  by  the  records  of  recent 
municipal  exposures  in  half  a  dozen  great  American  cities, 
by  two  independent  investigations  by  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment during  the  past  year,  and  by  the  common  knowledge 
of  the  people  of  the  East  Side  tenement  district  of  New  York, 
whose  daughters  and  friends'  daughters  have  been  chiefly 
exploited  by  it. 

Poland  and  the  Markets  of  the  East. 

The  ancient  and  more  familiar  white  slave  trade  was  the 
outright  sale  of  women  from  Eastern  Europe  into  the  Orient 
through  the  big  general  depot  of  Constantinople.  The  chief 
recruiting-ground  for  this  was  the  miserable  Ghetto  of  Europe 
in  the  old  kingdom  of  Poland,  now  held  by  Austria  and 
Russia,  where  the  Jews  were  herded  out  of  the  rest  of  Chris- 
tendom by  the  persecutions  of  the  Middle  Ages.  This  section 
is  known  from  Alexandria  to  Shanghai  for  its  shipment  of 
women  like  "Anne  of  Austria"  in  Kipling's  "Ballad  of 
Fisher's  Boarding-House"  in  India: 

From  Tarnau  in  Galicia 

To  Jaun  Bazar  she  came, 
To  eat  the  bread  of  infamy 

And  take  the  wage  of  shame. 

The  recruiting-ground  for  the  supplies  of  women  for  this 
trade,  East  or  "West,  is  always  the  section  inhabited  by  the 
very  poor.  Out  of  this  racial  slum  of  Europe  has  come  for 
unnumbered  years  the  Jewish  kaftan,  leading  the  miserable 
Jewish  girl  from  European  civilization  into  Asia.  The  Jewish 
church  fought  the  kaftan  with  all  its  power.    In  life  he  was 


74  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ostracized ;  in  death,  dragged  to  an  unholy  grave.  But  to  this 
day  he  conies  out  of  Galicia  and  Russian  Poland,  with  his 
white  face  and  his  long  beard, — the  badge  of  his  ancient 
faith, — and  wanders  across  the  face  of  the  earth.  Occasion- 
ally members  of  the  fraternity  come  into  New  York:  men 
of  seventy,  sometimes,  with  gray  beards,  following  their  trade 
through  life  to  the  very  end.  Within  the  year  there  was  in 
New  York  an  individual  of  this  profession,  known  as  "Little 
Bethlehem, ' '  from  the  scene  of  his  former  business — the  Holy 
Land. 

The  Kaftan  in  the  New  World. 

In  the  last  part  of  the  last  century  a  new  field  opened  for 
this  European  industry.  Great  masses  of  young  male  labor- 
ers went  westward  out  of  Europe  to  do  the  work  of  estab- 
lishing civilization  in  a  new  hemisphere.  There  were  two 
or  three  men  to  one  woman  in  this  great  shifting  of  popula- 
tion, which  is  still  taking  place.  And  the  social  relations 
of  the  whole  world  were  affected  by  it.  One  great  market  for  the 
procurer's  supplies,  from  the  time  of  the  Middle  Ages,  had 
been  the  camps  of  armies.  In  the  last  fifty  years  two  con- 
tinents have  been  filled,  in  city  and  country,  with  a  new  and 
similar  market — the  camps  of  male  laborers. 

The  Jewish  kaftan,  for  some  reason,  did  not  try  his  trade 
with  North  America.  He  exploited  South  America  instead ; 
and  in  Argentine  Republic  he  found  a  market  that  rivaled 
the  East.  He  could  transfer  women  there,  for  a  lump  sum, 
into  what  are  known  to  the  New  York  Trade  as  "slave 
houses";  or,  in  accordance  with  the  more  Occidental  develop- 
ment of  the  business  common  to  most  Western  countries,  one 
youth  could  marry  or  pretend  to  marry  one  girl,  travel  abroad 
with  her,  and  live  with  her  as  her  manager. 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  75 

So  largely  have  these  people  emigrated  to  Argentina  that 
there  is  a  considerable  colony  of  them  in  the  suburbs  of 
Buenos  Aires.  Excluded  from  the  society  of  other  persons 
of  their  own  race  and  religion,  they  have  secured  burial-places 
of  their  own, — somewhat  similar  to  that  which  has  been  estab- 
lished in  New  York, — and  have  even  set  up  their  own  syna- 
gogue, in  which  they  hold  ghastly  caricatures  of  religious 
services.  The  colony  is  strong  on  ceremonial  forms,  and 
Jewish  holidays  are  strictly  dedicated  by  the  women  to  devo- 
tion. The  people  still  remain  in  Buenos  Aires.  But  recently 
— as  part  of  an  agitation  extending  across  the  civilized  world 
— the  Argentine  Eepublic  has  made  their  business  of  importa- 
tion difficult  by  new  and  stringent  laws. 

Paris  the  Second  Center  of  the  World. 

It  remained  for  Paris,  the  second  center  of  the  business  in 
Europe,  to  develop  the  white  slave  trade  with  North  America. 
The  Parisian  type  of  trader  is  so  old  an  institution  that  his 
common  name,  maquereau  (mackerel),  appears  in  the  French 
dictionary.  His  trade  became  to  all  intents  and  purposes  a 
recognized  calling,  with  a  distinguishing  costume  of  its  own, 
consisting  of  black  velvet  trousers,  a  blouse,  and  a  peculiar 
silk  cap  known  as  the  bijou.  These  maquereaux  start  in  the 
business — and  most  of  the  remain  in  it — as  the  manager  of 
one  girl  of  the  poorer  classes,  whom  they  place  to  the  best 
possible  advantage.  From  one,  the  more  successful  advance 
to  the  business  management  of  a  number  of  girls.  In  all  this 
theirs  is  exactly  similar  to  the  American  type  of  trade  which 
has  developed  in  New  York.  The  maquereaux  reached  the 
height  of  their  prosperity  in  Paris  during  the  fashionable  and 
amusement-loving  reign  of  Louis  Napoleon  in  the  '60 's. 
With  the  simpler  and  more  democratic  feeling  at  the  begin- 


76  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ning  of  the  present  French  Republic,  public  sentiment  turned 
more  against  the  traffic.  Its  operators  were  frequently  trans- 
ported to  the  penal  colonies  in  New  Caledonia  and  French 
Guiana.  They  gradually  discarded  their  costume  and  slunk 
out  of  sight.  And  in  the  '70 's  they  began  to  emigrate  in 
large  numbers,  and  now  may  be  found  across  the  entire 
globe.  The  chief  points  of  export  were  London  and  New 
York.  But  so  much  more  profit  and  freedom  from  law  were 
obtained  in  the  capital  of  the  new  continent  that  it  very 
soon  received  more  attention  from  the  exporters  of  women 
than  any  other  place  in  the  world. 

The  Unprotected  Immigrant  Girl. 

Up  to  this  time  prostitution  had  existed  in  the  United 
States — as  most  people  assume  that  it  exists  to-day — without 
having  attracted  the  business  management  of  men  to  securing 
and  exploiting  its  supplies.  So  far  as  it  had  management, 
it  was  entirely  a  woman 's  business.  Its  supplies  came,  as  they 
must  always  come,  from  poor  and  unfortunate  families.  From 
1850  to  the  present  time,  the  poorest  and  most  unprotected 
class  has  been  the  newest  European  immigrants.  The  most 
exposed  and  unprotected  girls  are  those  in  domestic  service. 
For  over  half  a  century  this  class  of  population  has  been 
called  upon  to  furnish  the  great  bulk  of  the  supplies  of  girls 
in  our  large  cities,  and  this  class  of  employment  far  more 
than  any  other. 

In  1857,  the  police  of  New  York,  under  the  direction  of 
Dr.  "W.  "W.  Sanger,  the  resident  physician  of  the  institutions 
on  BlackwelTs  Island,  gathered  statistics  on  carefully  pre- 
pared blanks  from  two  thousand  of  the  six  thousand  pros- 
titutes then  supposed  to  be  in  New  York.  Of  these  over 
three-fifths  were  born  abroad,  and  at  least  three-quarters  were 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  77 

of  foreign  birth  or  parentage;  one-half  had  been  servants 
before  entering  the  profession.  The  new  immigration  of  the 
time  was  Irish  and  German ;  it  furnished  the  greatest  number 
of  women,  simply  because  of  their  exposed  position  in  the  city 
slums.  More  than  one-third  of  the  two  thousand  women  were 
born  in  Ireland — noted  throughout  Europe  for  the  chastity 
of  its  women. 

The  French  Importer's  Shortcomings. 

The  French  maquereau  was  immediately  successful  in  a 
country  where  the  business  had  developed  in  so  haphazard 
a  way.  The  women  he  brought  to  this  country  he  dressed 
well;  he  kept  them  abstemious  from  liquors,  and  implanted 
in  their  minds  the  ambition  of  acquiring  a  competence  and 
returning  to  live  in  France.  They  tended  from  the  first  to 
replace  the  disheveled  and  desperate  creatures  produced  by 
the  American  slums. 

But,  though  extremely  successful  in  America  at  first,  and 
still  prosperous  in  the  majority  of  our  greater  cities,  the 
French  maquereau  was  not  the  type  finally  adapted  to 
conduct  the  business  in  the  self-governing  American  munici- 
palities. He  intended  to  return  to  France  after  securing  a 
competency,  frequented  his  own  exclusive  boarding-houses 
and  clubs,  and  did  not  even  learn  the  language.  He  failed  to 
identify  himself  with  any  political  organization.  He  conse- 
quently had  no  direct  political  influence,  and  obtained 
his  right  to  break  the  law  simply  by  payments  of  money.  In 
this  way  he  occupied  very  much  the  same  position  as  the 
Chinese  gambler  in  the  community  of  law-breakers.  Both  are 
always  able  to  do  business  in  a  large  city,  but  they  are  much 
more  liable  to  extortion  and  blackmail  than  persons  who  are 
directly  identified  with  the  political  machine.    It  was  neces- 


78  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

sary  for  the  procuring  and  selling  of  girls  to  become  an  inte- 
gral part  of  slum  politics — as  the  tenement-house  saloon  and 
gambling-houses  had  been  preceding  it — before  it  could  be 
established  on  its  present  firm  footing. 

The  Tammany  Red-Light  District. 

About  twenty-five  years  ago  the  third  great  flush  of  immi- 
gration, consisting  of  Austrian,  Russian,  and*  Hungarian 
Jews,  began  to  come  into  New  York.  Among  these  immigrants 
were  a  large  number  of  criminals,  who  soon  found  that  they 
could  develop  an  extremely  profitable  business  in  the  sale  of 
women  in  New  York.  The  Police  Department  and  the  police 
courts,  before  which  all  the  criminal  cases  of  the  city  were 
first  brought,  were  absolutely  in  the  hands  of  Tammany  Hall, 
which,  in  its  turn,  was  controlled  by  slum  politicians.  A  great 
body  of  minor  workers  among  this  class  of  politicians  obtained 
their  living  in  tenement-house  saloons  or  gambling-houses, 
and  their  control  of  the  police  and  police  courts  allowed  them 
to  disregard  all  provisions  of  the  law  against  their  business. 
The  new  exploiter  of  the  tenement-house  population  among 
the  Jews  saw  that  this  plan  was  good,  and  organized  a  local 
Tammany  Hall  association  to  apply  it  to  the  business  of  pro- 
curing and  selling  girls. 

The  organization  which  they  formed  was  known  in  the 
Lexow  investigation  as  the  Essex  Market  Court  gang,  but 
named  itself  the  Max  Hochstim  Association.  Among  various 
officers  of  this  organization  was  Mr.  Martin  Engel,  the  Tam- 
many Hall  leader  of  the  Eighth  Assembly  District  in  the  late 
'90  's;  and  with  him  a  group  of  Tammany  Hall  politicians  in 
control  of  this  district  and  the  Third  Assembly  District  along 
the  Bowery,  just  to  the  east. 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  79 

Getting  Supplies  for  New  York. 

This  Jewish  district,  as  it  was  when  Mr.  Martin  Engel  was 
leader,  opened  the  eyes  of  the  minor  politician  of  the  slums 
to  the  tremendous  financial  field  that  a  new  line  of  enterprise, 
the  business  of  procuring  and  the  traffic  in  women,  offered 
him.  The  red-light  district,  operated  very  largely  by  active 
members  of  the  local  Tammany  organization,  gave  to  indi- 
vidual men  interested  in  its  development  in  many  cases  twenty 
and  thirty  thousand  dollars  a  year.  Very  few  of  the  lead- 
ing workers  in  the  tenement  saloons  or  gambling  enterprises 
had  been  able  at  that  time  to  make  half  of  that  from  the 
population  around  them. 

The  supplies  of  girls  for  use  in  the  enterprises  of  the  po- 
litical procurers  did  not  at  first  come  entirely  from  the  fami- 
lies of  their  constituents.  The  earlier  Jewish  immigration 
contained  a  great  preponderance  of  men,  and  comparatively 
few  young  girls.  The  men  in  the  business  made  trips  into  the 
industrial  towns  of  New  England  and  Pennsylvania,  where 
they  obtained  supplies  from  the  large  number  of  poorly  paid 
young  mill  girls,  one  especially  ingenious  New  Yorker  being 
credited  with  gaining  their  acquaintance  in  the  garb  of  a 
priest.  But,  gradually,  as  the  population  grew  and  the  num- 
ber  of  men  engaged  in  the  business  increased,  the  girls  were 
taken  more  and  more  from  the  tenement  districts  of  the  East 
Side. 

"When  this  misfortune  began  to  develop  among  the  Jewish 
people  of  the  East  Side,  it  was  a  matter  of  astonishment,  as 
well  as  horror.  The  Jewish  race  has  for  centuries  prided 
itself  upon  the  purity  of  its  women.  Families  whose  daugh- 
ters were  taken  away  in  the  beginning  of  the  New  York  traffic 
often  formally  cast  them  off  as  dead;  among  the  very  ortho- 


80  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

dox,  there  were  cases  where  the  family  went  through  the 
ancient  ceremonial  for  the  dead — slashing  the  lapels  of  their 
clothing  and  sitting  out  the  seven  days  of  mourning  in  their 
houses.  But  individual  families  of  new  immigrants,  often 
not  speaking  English,  naturally  had  little  chance  against  a 
closely  organized  machine.  The  Essex  Market  gang,  as  was 
shown  in  the  Lexow  testimony,  not  only  could  protect  their 
own  business  in  women,  but  had  the  facilities  to  prove  entirely 
innocent  women  guilty. 

New  York's  First  Export  Trade. 

The  business  grew  so  rapidly  under  these  favoring  auspices 
that  the  East  Side  was  soon  not  only  producing  its  own  sup- 
plies, but  was  exporting  them.  The  first  person  to  under- 
take this  export  trade  with  foreign  countries,  according  to  the 
verbal  history  of  the  East  Side,  was  a  man  who  later  became 
a  leading  spirit  in  the  Tammany  organization  of  the  district ; 
he  took  one  or  two  girls  in  1889  or  1890  to  compete  with  the 
the  Russian  and  Galician  kaftan  in  the  Buenos  Aires  market. 
This  venture  was  not  very  successful  and  the  dealer  soon  re- 
turned to  New  York.  Since  that  time  a  few  hundred  New 
York  girls  have  been  taken  to  Buenos  Aires,  but,  generally 
speaking,  it  has  not  proved  a  successful  market  for  the  New 
York  trade. 

South  Africa,  on  the  contrary,  proved  an  excellent  field, 
as  mining  districts  always  are.  In  the  middle  of  the  '90 's — 
during  the  lean  years  of  Mayor  Strong's  administration — the 
stories  of  the  fabulous  wealth  to  be  made  in  the  South  African 
gold  and  diamond  fields  came  to  the  attention  of  the  New 
York  dealers,  and  they  took  women  there  by  the  hundred. 
They  proved  successful  in  competition  with  the  dealers  from 
the  European  centers  in  Paris  and  Poland,  and  established 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  81 

colonies  of  New  Yorkers  through  the  southern  end  of  the 
continent.  Large  sums  of  money  were  made  there,  and  a 
few  considerable  fortunes  were  acquired,  which  their  owners 
brought  home  and  put  into  various  businesses  in  New  York 
— including  gambling-houses  and  "Raines-laws"  hotels.  The 
English  Government  in  recent  years  has  been  more  stringent 
against  the  trade,  and  under  a  new  law  gave  imprisonment 
and  lashing  to  men  engaged  in  it.  One  man,  now  occupied 
in  a  Raines-law  hotel  enterprise  in  New  York,  was  among 
those  imprisoned,  having  recently  served  a  sentence  of  one 
year.  The  campaign  against  the  business  made  South  Africa 
a  much  less  attractive  field  than  formerly ;  but  there  are  still 
small  New  York  colonies  in  various  cities  there. 

Once  acquainted  with  the  advantages  of  the  foreign  trade, 
the  New  York  dealer  immediately  entered  into  competition 
with  the  French  and  Polish  traders  across  the  world.  There 
are  no  boundaries  to  this  business ;  its  travelers  go  constantly 
to  and  fro  upon  the  earth,  peering  into  the  new  places,  espe- 
cially into  spots  where  men  congregate  on  the  golden  fron- 
tiers ;  and  the  news  comes  back  from  them  to  Paris  and  Lem- 
berg  and  New  York.  After  South  Africa,  the  New  York 
dealers  went  by  hundreds  into  the  East — to  Shanghai  and  to 
Australia ;  they  followed  the  Russian  army  through  the  Russo- 
Japanese  war;  they  went  into  Alaska  with  the  gold  rush, 
and  into  Nevada;  and  they  have  camped  in  scores  and  hun- 
dreds on  the  banks  of  the  new  Panama  Canal.  However,  the 
foreign  trade  was  not  large  compared  with  the  trade  with 
the  cities  of  the  United  States,  which  was  to  develop  later. 
The  demand  was  naturally  not  so  great. 


82  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  Independent  Benevolent  Association. 

In  the  meantime,  the  business  grew  and  strengthened  and 
developed  its  own  institutions  in  its  headquarters  at  New 
York.  The  best  known  of  these  is  the  Jewish  society  that  goes 
under  the  name  of  the  New  York  Independent  Benevolent 
Association.  This  organization  was  started  in  1896  by  a  party 
of  dealers  who  were  returning  from  attendance  at  the  funeral 
of  Sam  Engel,  a  brother  of  Martin  Engel,  the  Tammany 
leader  of  the  red-light  assembly  district.  In  the  usual  post- 
funeral  discussion  of  the  frailty  of  human  life,  the  fact  was 
brought  out  that  the  sentiment  of  the  Jews  of  the  East  Side 
against  men  of  their  profession  barred  them  generally  from 
societies  giving  death  benefits,  and  even  caused  discrimination 
against  them  in  the  purchase  of  burial-places  in  the  cemetery. 
A  society  was  quickly  incorporated  under  the  laws  of  New 
York,  and  a  burial-plot  secured  and  enclosed  in  Washington 
Cemetery  in  Brooklyn.  This  plot  contains  now  about  forty 
dead,  including  some  ten  young  children.  Of  the  adults,  about 
a  third  have  died  violent  or  unnatural  deaths. 

The  Independent  Benevolent  Association  guarded  its  mem- 
bership carefully,  but  grew  to  contain  nearly  two  hundred 
persons.  As  most  of  its  people  were  prosperous,  it  was  able, 
as  a  body,  to  exert  a  continual  influence  through  political 
friends  to  prevent  punishment  of  individual  members.  Mat- 
ters of  mutual  trade  interest  were  discussed  at  its  gatherings, 
and  later,  when  the  more  enterprising  men  in  it  found  larger 
opportunities  in  the  other  cities  of  the  country,  its  members 
would  naturally  inform  one  another  of  conditions  of  business 
in  different  sections.  In  New  York,  as  various  members  grew 
to  undertake  larger  business  enterprises,  the  usual  difference 
of  trade  interest  between  the  retailer  and  the  wholesaler  grew 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  83 

up;  and  the  leading  operators  formed  a  strictly  trade  asso- 
ciation; among  themselves — the  association  whose  meeting- 
place  was  discovered  and  broken  into  during  business  sessions 
by  the  District  Attorney's  force  in  his  campaign  of  1907. 

New  York's  Creation — The  Cadet. 

In  the  freedom  of  the  Van  "Wyck  administration  of  the  late 
'90 's,  the  latest  type  of  slum  politician  that  New  York  has 
developed  demonstrated  further  his  peculiar  value  to  politics, 
and  the  great  rewards  of  politics  for  him..  Like  the  saloon- 
keeper before  him,  he  had  large  periods  of  the  day  to  devote 
to  planning  and  developing  political  schemes;  there  were  a 
great  many  dependents  and  young  men  connected  with  the 
business ;  and  there  grew  up  in  the  various  political  and  social 
centers  of  the  East  Side  so-called  "hang-out  joints,"  saloons 
and  coffee-houses,  where  these  men  came  together  to  discuss 
political  and  business  matters.  It  soon  became  evidence  that 
these  gangs  were  exceedingly  valuable  as  political  instruments 
in  "repeating"  or  casting  a  great  number  of  fraudulent  votes. 

Yet,  in  spite  of  this  growth  of  an  entirely  new  element 
of  political  strength,  Tammany  Hall  was  defeated  in  the  elec- 
tion of  1901,  largely  because  of  a  revulsion  of  popular  feeling 
against  some  phases  of  the  white  slave  trade.  This  feeling 
was  especially  directed  against  the  so-called  cadets — a  name 
now  used  across  the  world  to  designate  the  masses  of  young 
men  engaged  in  this  trade  in  and  out  of  New  York,  exactly 
as  the  name  of  maquereau  is  used  to  designate  the  Paris 
operator.  As  the  women  secured  for  the  business  are  at  first 
scarcely  more  than  children,  the  working  of  inducing  them 
to  adopt  it  was  naturally  undertaken  most  successful  by 
youths  not  much  older  than  themselves.  In  this  way  the 
specialization  of  the  business  in  New  York  produced  the  New 


84  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

York  cadet — the  most  important  figure  in  the  business  in 
America  to-day.  The  Committee  of  Fifteen — which  made  a 
thorough  and  world-wide  investigation  bearing  upon  the  con- 
ditions of  life  in  New  York  developed  by  the  disclosures  of 
1901  and  1902 — defined  this  new  American  product  as  fol- 
lows: 

"The  cadet  is  a  young  man,  averaging  from  eighteen  to 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  who,  after  having  served  a  short  ap- 
prenticeship as  a  'watch-boy'  or  'lighthouse,'  secures  a  staff 
of  girls  and  lives  upon  their  earnings.  The  victim  of  the 
cadet  is  usually  a  young  girl  of  foreign  birth,  who  knows  little 
or  nothing  of  the  conditions  of  American  life. ' ' 

The  Spread  to  Other  American  Cities. 

A  general  feeling  of  resentment  because  the  Tammany  or- 
ganization of  the  East  Side  had  developed  this  new  institu- 
tion, and  others  connected  with  it,  among  the  unprotected 
immigrants  of  that  district,  caused  the  destruction  of  the  red- 
light  district  by  an  anti-Tammany  administration,  and  a 
great  lessening  of  the  freedom  of  the  business  in  New  York 
City.  In  a  way,  however,  this  temporary  period  of  reform 
was  a  means  of  greatly  extending  the  business  in  United 
States  and  eventually  in  New  York.  The  larger  operators  in 
the  business  established  themselves  throughout  the  various 
larger  cities  of  the  country ;  and  the  cadets  still  secured  their 
supplies  in  the  old  recruiting-grounds  of  the  East  Eide,  where 
they  were  in  no  particular  danger.  An  elaborate  campaign 
against  them  a  little  later  resulted  in  the  arrest  and  imprison- 
ment of  seven  of  these  men  as  vagrants.  They  were  released 
long  before  the  expiration  of  their  term,  by  the  influence  of 
political  friends. 

The  now  type  of  political  industry  developed  in  New  York 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  85 

proved  very  successful  in  other  cities  of  the  country — so  much 
so  that  it  has  now  established  itself  to  some  extent  in  at  least 
three-quarters  of  the  large  cities  of  the  United  States.  The 
first  places  to  be  developed  were  naturally  the  nearest.  One 
of  the  earliest  was  Newark,  New  Jersey,  within  ten  miles  of 
New  York. 

A  group  of  members  of  the  Independent  Benevolent  Asso- 
ciation came  into  that  city  in  the  early  1900 's,  and  soon  after 
the  New  York  red-light  district  had  been  broken  up  they  ob- 
tained control  of  practically  the  entire  business  of  Newark. 
They  secured  as  supplies  the  ignorant  immigrant  girls  taken 
from  the  East  Side  of  New  York,  and  they  brought  with  them 
from  New  York,  or  educated  in  Newark,  their  own  staff  of 
cadets — who  not  only  worked  vigorously  as  "repeaters"  in 
local  elections,  but  returned  to  form  some  of  the  most  vigorous 
voters  in  the  lower  Tammany  Hall  districts  of  New  York. 
But  in  1907  the  attempt  of  one  member  of  the  Benevolent 
Association  to  defraud  another  out  of  his  business  by  the 
aid  of  local  political  forces  led  to  a  disruption  in  the  body  of 
men  who  were  so  well  established  in  Newark.  An  expose  fol- 
lowed this  disagreement,  which  broke  up,  for  the  time  at  least, 
the  local  business,  wtih  its  importations  of  New  York  women, 
and  temporarily  stopped  the  return  supply  of  illegal  voters 
to  New  York.  The  testimony  of  the  time  showed  that  these 
men  had  worked  industriously  in  the  interests  of  the  Tam- 
many leaders  in  the  downtown  tenement  districts  of  New 
York,  from  which  the  supply  of  Newark  girls  was  largely 
obtained.  In  Newark  the  chief  of  police  killed  himself  subse- 
quently to  the  exposure. 


86  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  Emigration  into  Philadelphia. 

Another  group  of  Jewish  operators  transferred  themselves 
from  New  York  to  Philadelphia.  They  secured  their  supplies 
of  women — largely  young  immigrant  girls — from  New  York, 
and  retained  their  New  York  cadets.  The  members  joined  the 
Mutual  Republican  Club  of  the  Thirteenth  Ward  of  Philadel- 
phia, whose  president  was  the  sheriff  of  the  county ;  and  their 
cadets  were  extremely  valuable  to  the  political  machine  as 
"repeaters,"  and  as  managers  of  the  growing  Jewish  vote 
in  Philadelphia.  These  "repeaters"  are  incredibly  efficient, 
some  having  the  record  of  working  in  three  States — at  Phila- 
delphia, Newark,  and  New  York — on  the  same  election  day. 

The  public  expose  in  Philadelphia  did  not,  of  course,  come 
through  any  political  source  in  Philadelphia — there  is  but 
one  political  party  there.  It  was  started  by  the  case  of 
Pauline  Goldstein,  one  of  the  Russian-Jewish  immigrant  girls, 
who  was  obtained  in  New  York,  and  later  thrown  out,  scantily 
clothed,  upon  the  streets  of  Philadelphia,  when  sick.  The 
matter  was  taken  up  by  the  Law  and  Order  Society.  Some 
hundred  places  were  found  being  operated  by  the  New  York 
Jewish  group,  with  several  hundred  foreign  immigrant  girls. 
The  investigation  showed  that  there  was  a  close  community 
of  interest  among  this  body  of  men,  and  that  a  small  group 
had  charge  of  the  relations  with  the  politicians  and  police. 
Some  sixty  men  were  given  jail  sentences.  "Jake"  Edelman, 
one  of  the  leaders,  was  the  man  arrested  in  the  case  of  the 
Goldstein  girl.  He  "jumped  his  bail";  went  to  join  the  New 
York  colony  in  South  Africa;  returned,  to  be  arrested  on  the 
Bowery  in  New  York;  and  at  his  trial  he  was  represented  by 
New  York  counsel,  accompanied  by  a  large  group  of  New 
York  friends.    The  prosecution  of  these  men  in  Philadelphia 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  87 

was  very  largely  responsible  for  the  eighteen  months  of  re- 
form administration  in  that  city  in  1905  and  1906.  But  since 
then  the  New  York  operator  is  returning  to  Philadelphia,  and 
the  cadet  is  firmly  established  in  the  local  life. 

Chicago,  San  Francisco,  and  St.  Louis. 

In  Chicago  the  New  York  operators  secured  an  even 
stronger  hold.  Several  hundred  New  York  dealers  came  into 
the  West  Side  section  after  the  Low  administration  and  estab- 
lished there  an  excellent  reproduction  of  the  red-light  dis- 
trict. At  its  height  it  contained  between  seven  hundred  and 
fifty  and  a  thousand  Jewish  girls  from  New  York — largely 
new  immigrants,  who  could  scarcely  speak  the  language. 
Local  crusades  have  sent  a  great  number  of  the  New  York 
men  farther  west ;  but  the  cadet  is  now  one  of  the  prominent 
features  of  the  local  slum  life,  and  a  considerable  number 
of  New  York  Jews  still  remain  in  positions  of  business  and  po- 
litical leadership  there. 

A  detailed  statement  of  the  spread  of  activities  of  the  New 
York  dealer  and  cadet  through  the  United  States  since  the 
exodus  from  New  York  after  1901  would  serve  as  a  catalogue 
of  the  municipal  scandals  of  the  past  half  dozen  years,  and 
would  include  the  majority  of  the  large  cities  of  the  country. 
The  New  York  Jewish  cadets  were  found  to  be  present  in  hun- 
dreds in  San  Francisco  at  the  great  expose  there,  and  took  a 
prominent  part  in  the  rottenness  that  preceded  it;  they  were 
strong  in  Los  Angeles  before  the  disclosing  of  conditions  in 
their  line  of  business  changed  the  administration  there  a 
year  ago ;  and  two  of  the  most  notorious  leaders  of  New  York 's 
East  Side  were  prominent  figures  in  the  political  underworld 
uncovered  by  Folk  in  St.  Louis.  To-day  there  are  strong 
in  all  the  greater  cities;  they  swarm  at  the  gateway  of  the 


88  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Alaskan  frontier  at  Seattle;  they  infest  the  streets  and  res- 
taurants of  Boston ;  they  flock  for  the  winter  to  New  Orleans ; 
they  fatten  on  the  wages  of  the  Government  laborers  in 
Panama ;  and  they  abound  in  the  South  and  Southwest  and  in 
the  mining  regions  of  the  West. 

Slum  Politics'  New  Concentration. 

The  growth  of  this  new  factor  in  American  city  politics 
was  due,  not  alone  to  the  advantages  it  offered,  but  to  a 
general  necessity  on  the  part  of  the  slum  politician  to  concen- 
trate his  attention  upon  prostitution  as  a  means  of  getting 
a  living.  This  condition  was  brought  about  by  the  astonishing 
success  of  the  campaign  against  gambling,  beginning  some 
ten  years  ago,  both  in  New  York  and  in  most  of  the  large  cities 
of  the  country.  Policy  is  almost  obliterated,  pool-rooms  are 
rapidly  declining,  and  little  by  little  gambling  at  race-trncks 
is  dwindling  throughout  the  country.  To  any  one  remember- 
ing the  condition  of  public  sentiment  and  the  frank  and  open 
operation  of  gambling  in  American  cities  fifteen  years  ago, 
this  change  is  little  less  than  startling. 

One  principal  reason  for  the  change  was  the  awaking  of 
the  personal  interest  of  the  richer  and  more  influential  classes 
against  gambling.  Practically  all  of  the  gambling  enterprises 
fed  upon  the  earnings  of  the  poor — a  sure  tax  levied  upon  the 
people  by  the  slum  politician,  who  stooped  in  his  policy  games 
to  pick  up  the  last  and  meanest  penny  of  the  child.  But 
too  many  small  embezzlements  from  their  employers  were 
made  by  clerks  and  book-keepers  to  pay  the  race-track  and 
pool-room  gambler.  The  imagination  and  interest  of  the 
employing  class  became  enlisted,  and  gambling  enterprises 
were  pursued  with  a  vigorous  attention  which  drove  them 
out.    The  net  result  of  all  this  to  the  slum  politician  was  sue- 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  89 

cintly  expressed  by  an  observant  old-time  policeman  upon  the 
Bowery  of  New  York  about  a  year  ago : 

"Where's  a  district  politician  goin'  to  get  a  bit  of  money 
nowadays  ?  The  pool-rooms  are  all  shut  down ;  policy 's  gone. 
There  ain  't  no  place  at  all  but  the  women. ' ' 

Tammany's  Delicate  Situation. 

Because  of  this  narrowing  tendency  in  the  field  of  slum 
pohtics,  the  politicians  of  Tammany  Hall  below  Fourteenth 
Street  found  themselves  in  an  exceedingly  delicate  position 
after  the  exposure  that  defeated  them  in  the  red-light  cam- 
paign. The  decline  of  gambling  was  already  evident,  and  its 
thousands  of  political  employees — a  mainstay  in  illegal  voting 
— had  been  discharged;  and  new  election  machinery  made 
difficult  the  wholesale  voting  of  broken  tramps  and  town 
loafers.  Not  only  was  some  participation  in  the  sale  of  women 
necessary,  but  the  use  of  the  gangs  of  young  procurers  and 
thieves,  who  had  their  beginning  in  the  red-light  days,  be- 
came almost  indispensable  if  the  politicians  were  to  secure 
the  vote  upon  which  their  power  rested,  both  in  their  party 
and  out. 

This  situation  was  met  with  adroitness.  The  district  below 
Fourteenth  Street  had  now  come  under  control  of  the  fore- 
most combination  of  slum  politicians  in  the  United  States, 
known  the  country  over.  Martin  Engel,  the  old  Tammany 
Hall  leader  of  the  red-light  district,  was  solemnly  deposed; 
a  husky  young  politician  was  made  leader  of  the  district, 
seriously  put  on  a  pair  of  kid  gloves,  called  in  the  reporters, 
and  pounded  with  great  pomp  and  ceremony  the  persons  of 
a  few  unfriended  cadets.  After  this  drama,  it  was  announced 
with  stern  and  glassy  front  that  cadets  were  forever  banished 
from  the  district — and  one  of  the  most  useful  Tammany  myths 


90  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ever  sent  gliding  down  the  columns  of  the  local  newspapers 
was  launched  on  its  long  way.  The  district  retained  the 
chief  disorderly -house  keepers  and  captains  of  cadets  upon  its 
list  of  election  captains — where  it  keeps  them  yet;  and  the 
bands  of  cadets  and  thieves  worked  in  its  service  as  they  had 
never  worked  before.  But  in  the  Third  District — about  the 
Bowery — they  began  to  have  their  real  headquarters. 

It  is,  of  course,  the  belief — fostered  by  the  great  ignorance 
and  indifference  of  the  more  influential  classes  as  to  the  con- 
ditions of  the  alien  poor  in  a  city  like  New  York — that  the 
cadet  died  out  largely  with  the  red  light.  On  the  contrary, 
he  has  largely  multiplied — as  every  close  observer  of  the  con- 
ditions of  the  East  Side  knows.  The  whole  country  has  been 
opened  up  for  the  supplies  of  New  York  procurers  since  the 
red-light  days;  the  development  of  the  lonely  woman  of  the 
street  and  tenement  has  increased  the  field  for  these  young 
cadets  greatly;  and  not  only  the  lower  but  now  the  upper 
East  Side  of  New  York  City  is  full  of  them.  The  woman 
they  live  upon,  and  her  daily  necessity  of  political  protection, 
brings  them  into  public  life,  and  makes  them  the  most  ac- 
cessible of  political  workers.  They  have  a  hostage  to  fortune 
always  on  the  street. 

The  East  Side  "Working  Girl  and  Her  Exploiters. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  how  the  picking  up  of  girls  for  the 
trade  in  and  outside  of  New  York  is  carried  on  by  these 
youths  on  the  East  Side  of  New  York,  which  has  now  grown, 
under  this  development,  to  be  the  chief  recruiting-ground  for 
the  so-called  white  slave  trade  in  the  United  States,  and  prob- 
ably in  the  world.  It  can  be  exploited,  of  course,  because  in 
it  lies  the  newest  body  of  immigrants  and  the  greatest  supply 
of  unprotected  young  girls  in  the  city.     These  now  happen 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  91 

to  be  Jews — as,  a  quarter  and  a  half  century  ago,  they  hap- 
pened to  be  German  and  Irish. 

The  odds  in  life  are  from  birth  strongly  against  the  young 
Jewish- American  girl.  The  chief  ambition  of  the  new  Jewish 
family  in  America  is  to  educate  its  sons.  To  do  this  the  girls 
must  go  to  work  at  the  earliest  possible  date,  and  from  the 
population  of  350,000  Jews  east  of  the  Bowery  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  young  girls  go  out  into  the  shops.  There  is  no  more 
striking  sight  in  the  city  than  the  mass  of  women  that  flood 
east  through  the  narrow  streets  in  a  winter's  twilight,  return- 
ing to  their  homes  in  the  East  Side  tenements.  The  exploita- 
tion of  young  women  as  money-earning  machines  has  reached 
a  development  on  the  East  Side  of  New  York  probably  not 
equaled  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 

It  is  not  an  entirely  healthy  development.  Thousands  of 
women  have  sacrificed  themselves  uselessly  to  give  the  boys 
of  the  family  an  education.  And  in  the  population  of  young 
males  raised  in  this  atmosphere  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  woman 
to  the  man,  there  have  sprung  up  all  sorts  of  specialization  in 
the  petty  swindling  of  women  of  their  wages.  One  class  of  men, 
for  instance,  go  about  dressed  like  the  hero  in  a  cook's  ro- 
mance, swindling  unattractive  and  elderly  working-women 
out  of  their  earnings  by  promising  marriage,  and  borrowing 
money  to  start  a  shop.  The  acute  horror  among  the  Jews  of 
the  state  of  being  an  old  maid  makes  swindling  of  Jewish 
women  under  promise  of  marriage  especially  easy. 

The  People  Who  Dance. 

But  the  largest  and  most  profitable  field  for  exploitation 
of  the  girls  of  the  East  Side  is  in  procuring  them  for  the  white 
slave  traffic.  This  line  of  swindling  is  in  itself  specialized. 
Formerly  its  chief  recruiting-grounds  were  the  public  amuse- 


92  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ment  parks  of  the  tenements  districts;  now  for  several  years 
they  have  been  the  dance  halls,  and  the  work  has  been  special- 
ized very  largely  according  to  the  character  of  the  halls. 

The  amusement  of  the  poor  girl  of  New  York — especially 
the  very  poor  girl — is  dancing.  On  Saturdays  and  Sundays 
the  whole  East  Side  dances  after  nightfall,  and  every  night 
in  the  week  there  are  tens  of  thousands  of  dancers  within 
the  limits  of  the  city  of  New  York.  The  reason  for  all  this 
is  simple :  dancing  is  the  one  real  amusement  within  the  work- 
ing girl's  means.  For  five  cents  the  moving-picture  show, 
the  only  competitor,  gives  half  an  hour's  diversion  and  sends 
its  audience  to  the  street  again;  for  five  cents  the  cheaper 
"dancing  academies"  of  the  East  Side  give  a  whole  evening's 
pleasure.  For  the  domestic  servant  and  the  poorer  shop-girl 
of  the  East  Side  there  is  practically  no  option,  if  she  is  to 
have  any  enjoyment  of  her  youth ;  and  not  being  able  to  dance 
is  a  generally  acknowledged  source  of  mortification. 

"Working  the  "Castle  Garden"  Halls. 

There  are  three  main  classes  of  dance-halls,  roughly-speak- 
ing, which  are  the  main  recruiting-places.  In  two  of  them 
are  secured  the  more  ignorant,  recent  immigrants,  who  appear 
in  the  houses  kept  by  the  larger  operators  of  the  Independent 
Benevolent  Association.  The  halls  of  the  first  class  are  known 
by  the  East  Side  boys  by  the  name  of  "Castle  Gardens." 
To  these  places,  plastered  across  their  front  with  the  weird 
Oriental  hieroglyphics  of  Yiddish  posters,  the  new  Jewish  im- 
migrant girl — having  found  a  job — is  led  by  her  sister  domes- 
tics or  shop-mates  to  take  her  first  steps  in  the  intricacies 
of  American  life.  She  cannot  yet  talk  the  language,  but  rigid 
social  custom  demands  that  she  be  able  to  dance.  She  ar- 
rives, pays  her  nickel  piece,  and  sits — a  big,  dazed,  awkward 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  93 

child — upon  one  of  the  wooden  benches  along  the  wall.  A 
strident  two-piece  orchestra  blasts  big,  soul-satisfying  pieces 
of  noise  out  of  the  surrounding  atmosphere,  and  finally  a 
delightful  young  Jewish-American  man,  with  plastered  hair, 
a  pasty  face,  and  most  finished  and  ingratiating  manners, 
desires  to  teach  her  to  dance.  Her  education  in  American  life 
has  begun. 

The  common  expression  for  this  process  among  the  young 
dance-hall  specialists  of  the  East  Side  is  "to  kop  out  a  new 
one."  Night  after  night  the  cheap  orchestra  sounds  from  the 
bare  hall,  the  new  herds  of  girls  arrive,  and  the  gangs  of 
loafing  boys  look  them  over.  The  master  of  the  "dancing 
academy ' '  does  not  teach  dancing  to  these  five-cent  customers ; 
he  cannot,  at  the  price;  he  simply  lets  his  customers  loose 
upon  the  floor  to  teach  themselves.  Some  of  the  boys  are 
"spielers," — youths  with  a  talent  for  dancing, — who  are  ad- 
mitted free  to  teach  the  girls,  and  are  given  the  proceeds 
of  an  occasional  dance.  The  others  pay  a  ten-cent  fee.  The 
whole  thing,  catering  to  a  class  exceeding  poor,  is  on  a  most 
inexpensive  scale.  Even  the  five-cent  drink  of  beer  is  too 
costly  to  be  handled  at  a  profit.  The  height  of  luxurious  in- 
dulgence is  the  treat  at  the  one-  and  two-cent  soda-stands  on 
the  sidewalk  below  the  dance-hall.  Contrary  to  the  common 
belief,  intoxicating  liquor  plays  but  a  small  part  in  securing 
girls  from  this  particular  type  of  place.  These  lonely  and 
poverty-stricken  girls,  ignorant  and  dazed  by  the  strange 
conditions  of  an  unknown  country,  are  very  easily  secured 
by  promise  of  marriage,  or  even  partnership. 

The  Polish  Saloon  Dance-Halls. 

A  class  very  similar  to  this,  but  of  different  nationality  and 
religion,  is  furnished  by  a  second  kind  of  dance-hall  on  the 


94  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

East  Side.  Just  north  of  Houston  Street  are  the  long  streets 
of  signs  where  the  Polish  and  Slovak  servant-girls  sit  in  stiff 
rows  in  the  dingy  employment  agencies,  waiting  to  be  picked 
up  as  domestic  servants.  The  odds  against  these  unfortunate, 
bland-faced  farm-girls  are  greater  than  those  against  the  Ga- 
lician  Jews.  They  arrive  here  more  like  tagged  baggage  than 
human  beings,  are  crowded  in  barracks  of  boarding-houses, 
eight  and  ten  in  a  room  at  night,  and  in  the  morning  the 
runner  for  the  employment  agency  takes  them,  with  all  their 
belongings  in  a  cheap  valise,  to  sit  and  wait  again  for  mis- 
tresses. Every  hand  seems  to  be  against  such  simple  and 
easily  exploited  creatures,  even  in  some  of  the  "homes"  for 
them. 

Just  below  this  section  of  the  Poles  and  Slaves  lies  the  great 
body  of  the  Jews,  and  in  the  borderland  several  Hebrews  with 
good  political  connections  have  established  saloons  with  dance- 
halls  behind  them.  For  the  past  five  or  six  years  the  Jewish 
cadets  have  found  these  particularly  profitable  resorts.  These 
girls  are  so  easily  secured  that  in  many  cases  the  men  who 
obtain  control  of  them  do  not  even  speak  their  language. 

Tammany  Hall  and  the  "Grand  Civic  Ball." 

For  a  third  of  a  century,  at  least,  the  young  slum  politician 
in  Tammany  has  danced  and  picknicked  his  way  into  political 
power.  The  chief  figures  in  New  York  slum  politics  followed 
this  method.  And  thus  arose  the  "grand  civic  ball"  of  the 
Bowery  district — of  which,  perhaps,  since  its  completion,  the 
present  Tammany  Hall  Building  in  Fourteenth  Street  has 
been  the  center.  But  the  recent  political  gangs  that  have 
formed  the  chief  strength  of  the  slum  districts  of  Tammany 
Hall  have  had  a  much  closer  connection  with  dance-halls 
than  any  political  bodies  before  them,  because  their  member- 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  95 

ship  is  so  largely  composed  of  cadets.  Practically  all  the  big 
gangs  that  have  figured  in  slum  politics  in  recent  years  started 
about  cheap-dance-halls.  Paul  Kelly's  began  in  the  halls 
about  the  lower  Bowery;  Eastman's  grew  strong  about  new 
Irving  Hall  in  the  Russian-Jewish  district  below  Delancey 
street;  and  Kid  Twist's  about  a  dance-hall  for  the  Galician 
Jews  in  the  far  East  Side. 

These  gangs  of  political  cadets  naturally  gravitate  toward 
Tammany  Hall  for  their  larger  affairs,  when  they  are  strong 
enough  to  do  so.  In  this  way  Tammany  Hall  itself,  among 
the  many  ''tough"  dance-halls  in  the  city  has  come  to  be  the 
leading  headquarters  for  disreputable  dances.  It  is  this  class 
of  dances  that  plays  a  most  prominent  part  in  finally  produc- 
ing the  American-bred  girl  for  the  cadet. 

The  Cadet's  Contribution. 

The  American-bred  Jewish  girl  does  not  attend  the  ' '  Castle 
Garden"  dancing  academies  for  "greenhorns."  Generally 
she  is  able  to  take  dancing  lessons,  and  her  dancing  is  done 
at  weddings  or  balls.  A  large  number  of  these  balls  are  given 
by  the  rising  young  political  desperadoes,  who  form  for  the 
East  Side  girls  local  heroes,  exactly  as  the  football  captains 
do  for  the  girls  in  a  college  town.  The  cadets,  who  make  up 
these  men's  followers,  become  acquainted  with  the  girls  upon 
the  street  at  noon  hour  or  at  closing  time,  when  the  young 
toughs  hang  about  the  curbings,  watching  the  procession 
of  shop-girls  on  the  walks.  Nothing  is  more  natural  than 
the  invitation  to  the  ball ;  and  nothing  is  more  degrading  than 
the  association,  at  these  balls,  with  the  cadets  and  their  ' '  flashy 
girls." 

There  is  liquor  at  these  dances,  which  plays  its  part  in  their 
influence.       The   course   of   a    girl   frequenting   these    East 


96  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Side  balls  is  one  of  increasing  sophistication  and  degrada- 
tion. At  its  end  she  is  taken  over  by  the  cadet  by  the  offer 
of  a  purely  commercial  partnership.  Only  one  practical  ob- 
jection to  the  life  remains  to  her — the  fear  of  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment. 

" That's  all  right;  you  won't  get  sent  away,"  says  the 
cadet.    ' '  I  can  take  care  of  that. ' ' 

His  indispensable  service  in  the  partnership  is  the  political 
protection  without  which  the  business  could  not  exist.  How 
well  he  performs  his  work  in  New  York  was  demonstrated  by 
the  recent  testimony,  before  the  Page  commission  of  the 
legislature,  of  the  immunity  of  women  of  this  kind  from  seri- 
ous punishment  by  the  local  courts. 

These  three  classes  of  girls  form  the  principal  sources  of 
the  supply  that  is  secured  in  New  York.  The  ignorant  "green- 
horns" are  taken  over  more  by  the  larger  operators  into  the 
houses.  The  American-bred  girl  is  the  alert  and  enterpris- 
ing creature  who  is  going  through  the  cities  of  the  United 
States  with  her  manager,  establishing  herself  in  the  streets 
and  cafes.  The  cadet  in  the  past  was  almost  always  Jewish; 
now  the  young  Italians  have  taken  up  the  business  in  great 
numbers.  There  are  a  number  of  "dancing  academies"  in  the 
Jewish  section  near  the  Bowery,  where  the  Italian  cadet 
secures  immigrant  girls.  He  attends  and  conducts  balls  of 
his  own,  which  are  attended  by  both  Christian  and  Jewish 
girls,  and  he  has  developed  an  important  field  for  Slavic  and 
Polish  girls  in  the  saloon  dance-halls  of  the  employment 
agency  district  just  north  of  "Little  Italy"  in  Harlem. 

The  Group  of  Italian  Importers. 

There  is  a  smaller  special  business  in  the  lower  part  of 
New  York,  which  brings  in  and  sends  out  of  the  city  a  number 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  97 

of  girls,  and  which  corresponds  more  closely  in  its  methods 
to  the  old  white  slave  trade  of  the  Orient.  For  a  number  of 
years  a  small  group  of  Italians,  who  have  been  very  active  in 
the  cause  of  the  Tammany  Hall  organization  of  the  Third  As- 
sembly District,  has  procured  Italian  girls  for  the  Italian 
trade  in  America.  The  girls  in  the  Italian  population  of  New 
York  are  guarded  as  carefully  by  their  mothers  as  any  class 
of  girls  in  America,  and  for  this  reason  are  not  picked  up 
in  any  considerable  number  in  the  ordinary  way  by  the  New 
York  cadet.  It  has  been  necessary  to  secure  them  from  Italy. 
The  plan  that  is,  perhaps,  most  frequently  worked,  is  to  get 
them  through  various  "wise"  members  of  the  great  mass  of 
young  Italian  laborers  who  return  to  Italy  every  year  for  the 
winter.  These  youths  induce  young  peasant  girls  to  accom- 
pany them  back  to  America  under  promise  of  marriage. 
"When  they  arrive  here,  they  are  satisfied  to  give  up  the  girls 
to  the  dealers  in  New  York  upon  payment  of  their  passage 
money  and  a  small  bonus. 

In  the  survey  of  the  conditions  of  the  procuring  business 
in  the  United  States  during  the  recent  Government  investiga- 
tions, no  more  melancholy  feature  was  discovered  than  that 
of  the  little  Italian  peasant  girls,  taken  from  various  dens, 
where  they  lay,  shivering  and  afraid,  under  the  lighted 
candles  and  crucifixes  in  their  bedrooms.  Fear  is  more 
efficacious  with  this  class  than  any  other,  because  of  the  no- 
torious tendency  of  the  low-class  Itaian  to  violence  and  mur- 
der. These  girls  are  closely  confined  see  only  their  man- 
agers and  Italian  laborers,  do  not  talk  English,  and  naturally 
do  not  know  how  to  escape.  At  last,  of  course,  they  become 
desperate  and  hardened  by  the  business.  The  American 
trade  in  them  centers  in  the  Bowery  Assembly  District  in 
New  York.     From  there  they  are  sent  in  small  numbers  to 


98  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

various  cities  where  the  Italian  laborer  is  found  in  consider- 
able numbers,  including  Philadelphia,  Pittsburg,  Chicago  and 
Boston. 

Half  the  Country's  Supply  from  New  York. 

This  is  a  rough  outline  of  the  system  of  procuring  and 
sending  girls  out  of  New  York  City  under  the  safeguard  of 
political  protection.  Detectives  of  the  Federal  Government, 
who  have  made  within  the  past  year  a  special  investigation 
of  this  business  in  all  of  the  large  cities  in  this  country,  esti- 
mate that  about  one-half  of  all  the  women  now  in  the  business 
throughout  the  United  States  started  their  career  in  this  coun- 
try in  New  York.  This  estimate  includes,  of  course,  the  wo- 
men imported  into  that  city,  as  well  as  those  taken  from  the 
population.  This  estimate  may  be  large,  but  there  can  be 
little  doubt,  since  recent  developments,  of  New  York's  growth 
to  leadership  as  the  chief  center  of  the  white  slave  trade  in 
in  the  world. 

The  Galician  and  Russian  kaftan  of  Lemberg  and  Warsaw 
has  had  one  chief  market  almost  destroyed  by  the  recent 
drastic  laws  in  Argentine  Republic,  which  leave  his  present 
field  of  operation  much  narrowed.  The  same  loss  of  trade 
by  legal  attack  has  come  now  upon  the  French  trader  in  his 
greatest  single  market,  the  United  States.  During  the  past 
year  two  independent  Federal  investigations — one  by  the 
regular  government  immigration  service  and  one  by  a  special 
commission  appointed  by  Congress — have  been  conducted. 
Their  attention  has  centered  chiefly  on  the  activities  of  the 
French  trade.  This  branch  of  the  white  slave  trade  in 
America  has  been  thoroughly  frightened  by  the  Government's 
activity,  and  the  number  of  maquereaux  in  this  country  has 
greatly  decreased  for  this  reason. 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  99 

New  Yorkers  Benefit  by  Supreme  Court  Decisions. 

The  movement  that  is  driving  the  French  importer  out  of 
America  has  proved  ineffectual  against  the  operator  from 
New  York  who  secures  immigrant  girls  after  they  have  landed. 
In  the  campaign  of  the  Federal  authorities  of  Chicago,  Joseph 
Keller  and  Louis  Ullman,  the  former  a  member  of  the  New 
York  Benevolent  Association,  were  each  sentenced  to  one  and 
a  half  years  of  imprisonment  for  harboring  two  Jewish  immi- 
grant girls  they  had  brought  to  Chicago  from  the  East  Side 
of  New  York.  They  appealed  to  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court,  and  this  held  that  while  directly  importing  girls  could 
be  punished  by  Federal  law,  the  provision  punishing  men  for 
merely  harboring  girls  taken  after  they  arrive  here  was  not 
constitutional;  and  that  the  exploiting  of  such  girls  must  be 
punished  by  the  State  law,  if  at  all. 

Thus,  while  the  business  out  of  Poland  and  Paris  has  been 
severely  curtailed  in  the  past  few  years,  there  has  so  far  been 
no  practical  setback  for  the  trader  from  New  York.  He  has 
to-day  several  thousands  of  girls,  secured  from  the  population 
of  New  York,  established  in  various  sections  of  the  earth. 
And  month  after  month  the  ranks  of  these  women  must  be 
filled  or  extended  out  of  the  East  Side  population.  This  is  a 
matter  of  desperate  seriousness  to  the  population  that  is  being 
drawn  upon  for  this  supply,  and  a  staring  advertisement  of 
New  York's  disgrace  across  the  world;  but  for  the  United 
States  at  large  it  is  less  serious  than  another  phase  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  business  out  of  New  York — the  extension 
of  its  political  cadet  system  throughout  the  cities  of  the 
United  States. 


100  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Spread  of  the  New  York  System. 

During  the  past  six  or  seven  years  the  police  of  most  large 
American  cities  outside  of  New  York  have  noticed  a  strange 
development  which  they  have  never  been  able  to  explain  en- 
tirely to  themselves.  The  business  enterprises  for  marketing 
girls  have  passed  almost  entirely  from  the  hands  of  women 
into  those  of  men.  In  every  case  these  men  have  the  most  in- 
timate connections  with  the  political  machines  of  the  slums, 
any  everywhere  there  has  developed  a  system  of  local  cadets. 

The  date  of  this  new  development  of  the  white  slave  trade 
outside  of  New  York  corresponds  almost  uniformly  with  the 
time  when  the  traders  and  cadets  from  the  New  York  red- 
light  district  introduced  New  York  methods  into  the  other 
cities  of  the  country  in  1901  and  1902.  Hundreds  of  New 
York  dealers  and  cadets  are  still  at  work  in  these  other  cities. 
But  much  more  important  are  the  local  youths,  whom  these 
missionaries  of  the  devil  brought  by  their  sight  of  their  sleek 
prosperity  into  their  trade.  Everywhere  the  boy  of  the  slums 
has  learned  that  a  girl  is  an  asset  which,  once  acquired  by 
him,  will  give  him  more  money  than  he  can  ever  earn,  and  a 
life  of  absolute  ease.  In  Chicago,  for  example,  prosecutions 
in  1908  conducted  by  Assistant  State's  Attorney  Clifford  G. 
Roe  caused  to  be  fined  or  sent  to  prison  one  hundred  and 
fifty  of  these  cadets,  nearly  all  local  boys,  who  had  procured 
local  working-girls  from  the  dance-halls  and  cheap  pleasure 
resorts  in  and  around  Chicago. 

The  Double  Influence  of  the  New  System. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  from  now  on  to  the  larger  part 
of  the  procuring  and  marketing  of  women  for  the  United 
States  will  be  carried  on  by  the  system  of  political  procurers 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  101 

developed  in  New  York.  The  operation  of  this  system  has  a 
double  influence  upon  our  large  cities.  On  the  one  side,  it  has 
great  political  importance,  for  the  reason  that  more  and  more, 
with  the  growing  concentration  of  the  slum  politician  upon 
this  field,  the  procurer  and  marketer  of  women  tends  to  hold 
the  balance  of  power  in  city  elections.  This  is  true  not  alone 
in  New  York;  analyzers  of  recent  political  contests  in  Phila- 
delphia and  Chicago  have  been  convinced  that  the  registra- 
tion and  casting  of  fraudulent  votes  from  disorderly  places 
in  those  cities  may  easily  determine  the  result  in  a  close  city 
election,  for  false  votes  by  the  thousand  are  cast  from  these 
resorts. 

Certainly  this  is  not  an  over-scrupulous  class  to  hold  the 
balance  of  political  power  in  a  community.  But  it  is  the 
other  influence  of  the  development  that  counts  most — its 
highly  efficient  system  for  procuring  its  supplies.  The  average 
life  of  women  in  this  trade  is  not  over  five  years,  and  supplies 
must  be  constantly  replenished.  There  is  something  appalling 
in  the  fact  that  year  after  year  the  demands  of  American 
cities  reach  up  through  thousands  to  the  tens  of  thousands 
for  new  young  girls.  The  supply  has  come  in  the  past  and 
must  come  in  the  future  from  the  girls  morally  broken  by  the 
cruel  social  pressure  of  poverty  and  lack  of  training.  The 
odds  have  been  enough  against  these  girls  in  the  past.  Now 
everywhere  through  the  great  cities  of  the  country  the  sharp 
eyes  of  the  wise  cadet  are  watching,  hunting  her  out  at  her 
amusements  and  places  of  work.  And  back  of  him  the  most 
adroit  minds  of  the  politicians  of  the  slums  are  standing  to 
protect  and  extend  with  him  their  mutual  interests. 

The  trade  of  procuring  and  selling  girls  in  America — taken 
from  the  weak  hands  of  women  and  placed  in  control  of  acute 
and  greedy  men — has  organized  and  specialized  after  its  kind 


102  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

exactly  as  all  other  business  has  done.  The  cadet  does  his 
procuring,  not  as  an  agent  for  any  larger  interest,  but  know- 
ing that  a  woman  can  always  be  sold  profitably  either  on  the 
streets  or  in  houses  in  American  cities.  The  larger  operators 
conduct  their  houses  and  get  their  supplies  from  the  cadet — 
take  him,  in  fact,  into  a  sort  of  partnership,  by  which  every 
week  he  collects  the  girl's  wages  as  her  agent.  The  ward 
politician  keeps  the  disorderly  saloon — a  most  natural  po- 
litical development,  because  it  serves  both  as  a  "hang-out" 
for  the  gangs  of  cadets  and  thieves,  and  a  market  for  women. 
And,  back  of  this,  the  politician  higher  up  takes  his  share 
in  other  ways.  No  business  pays  such  toll  to  the  slum  poli- 
ticians as  this  does.  The  First  "Ward  ball  of  "Hineky  Dink" 
Kenna  and  "Bath  House  John"  Coughlin,  the  kings  of  slum 
politics  in  Chicago ;  the  Larry  Mulligan  ball  in  New  York ;  the 
dances  of  the  Kelly  and  East  Side  and  Five  Points  New  York 
gangs,  all  draw  their  chief  revenue,  directly  or  indirectly, 
from  this  source.  From  low  to  high,  the  whole  strong  organi- 
zation gorges  and  fattens  on  the  gross  feeding  from  this  par- 
ticular thing.    , 

It  is  the  poor  and  ignorant  girl  who  is  captured — the  same 
class  that  has  always  furnished  the  "white  slaves"  of  the 
world.  Interesting  figures  made  by  the  police  concerning  the 
newcomers  into  the  South  Side  Levee  district  of  Chicago  tell 
the  same  story  as  the  statistics  of  New  York  in  1857.  All  but 
twelve  or  fifteen  per  cent,  are  of  foreign  birth  or  parentage, 
about  one-third  were  of  the  domestic  servant  class  before  they 
entered  the  life  of  prostitution. 

The  National  Center  op  the  Procurer. 

Meanwhile,  New  York,  the  first  in  the  development  of  this 
European  trade  in  America,  remains  its  center,  and  its  pro- 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  103 

curing  interests  are  the  strongest  and  most  carefully  organ- 
ized of  all.  The  young  cadet  has  his  beginning,  as  well  as  the 
woman  he  secures.  These  boys  learn  in  the  primary  schools 
of  the  farther  East  Side,  from  the  semi-political  gangs  in  the 
dance-halls ;  step  by  step,  as  they  grow  in  the  profession,  they 
graduate  into  the  Third  Assembly  District,  the  chief  "hang- 
out ' '  place  of  the  procurer  in  the  world.  In  all  the  East  Side 
districts  of  Tammany  Hall  these  youths  have  representatives 
who  look  out  for  their  interests;  but  here  two-thirds  of  the 
active  workers  are  or  have  been  interested  in  markets  of  pros- 
titution. 

Around  the  district's  eastern  edge  in  lower  Second  Avenue 
hang  the  mass  of  the  Jewish  cadets,  who  are  members  of  the 
strong  East  Side  political  gangs.  Many  of  them  are  deter- 
mined thieves  as  well.  Farther  along  is  a  mixture  of  the  more 
leisurely  class,  who  devote  all  their  attention  to  their  work 
as  managers  of  women.  Among  them  are  scores — and  through 
the  near-by  East  Side  hundreds — of  youths  who  have  women 
at  work  throughout  this  country,  especially  in  the  "West  and 
Southwest,  or  abroad,  but  who  prefer  to  remain,  themselves, 
in  the  companionship  and  comfort  of  the  national  headquar- 
ters of  their  trade.  Correspondence  on  the  condition  of  the 
white  slave  trade  comes  here  from  all  over  the  world.  On 
the  lower  Bowery  and  in  Chatham  Square  are  the  Italian 
cadets. 

There  are  scores  of  "hang-outs"  for  cadets  in  the  Third 
District,  and  in  all  the  notorious  saloons  the  waiters  are  man- 
agers of  women,  and  receive  their  jobs  on  the  recommendation 
of  politicians.  Special  lawyers  defend  the  cadets  when  they 
are  caught,  and  all  have  their  direct  access  to  the  political 
machine,  largely  through  the  political  owners  of  their  special 
"hang-outs."     Altogether,   it  is  a  colony  of  procurers  not 


104  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

equaled  throughout  the  world  in  its  powers  of  defense  and  of- 
fense. 

The  New  York  and  Paris  Apache. 

This  class  of  political  criminal  has  had  a  distinct  tendency 
toward  greater  and  greater  license.  The  type  of  youth  first 
known  as  cadet  was  a  slinking,  cowardly  person,  who  was 
physically  formidable  only  to  the  more  timid  foreign  immi- 
grants. Now,  and  especially  since  the  young  Italian  has  taken 
up  this  profession  in  New  York,  the  gangs  of  these  men  have 
constantly  grown  uglier  and  bolder.  A  curious  similarity  is 
shown  between  these  gangs  as  they  have  developed  in  New 
York,  and  the  Apaches,  the  bands  of  city  savages  in  Paris, 
whose  violent  crimes  were  responsible  for  the  recent  re-intro- 
duction of  capital  punishment  in  France.  A  statement  by  M. 
Bay,  head  of  the  Research  Brigade  in  that  city,  concerning 
the  outbreak  of  crime  there  in  1902,  shows  how  identical  the 
gangs  of  New  York  are  with  those  that  have  formed  in  the 
capital  of  France,  about  the  same  business  that  is  their  main- 
stay here. 

" Paris,''  he  said,  "is  empty;  the  women  upon  whom  the 
great  mass  of  these  hooligans  prey  are  unable  to  obtain  money. 
Eesult — the  scoundrels,  none  of  whom  are  capable  of  doing 
an  hour's  honest  work,  fall  back  on  the  knife,  the  revolver, 
or  the  burglar's  jimmy.  All  of  these  articles  can  be  pur- 
chased cheaply.  Another  reason  for  the  street  fights  which 
take  place  with  revolvers  is  jealousy.  A  woman  leaves  her 
'protector'  and  takes  up  with  another  man;  the  two  men  at 
once  become  sworn  enemies,  and  a  regular  vendetta  is  started 
between  them.  They  gather  their  friends  and  in  pitched 
battles  try  to  kill  each  other." 

The  highway  assaults,  murders,  and  street  fights  that  New 


The  Daughters  of  the  Poor.  105 

York  has  suffered  from  in  the  last  five  years  have  come  from 
an  exactly  similar  class  of  organization.  For  two  years  past 
the  operations  of  these  gangs  have  been  curtailed  by  the  ac- 
tivity against  them  of  the  Police  Department,  under  the  ad- 
ministration of  General  Bingham.  Gradually  his  campaign 
led  to  the  higher  and  more  important  enterprises  which  they 
made  headquarters  for  themselves  and  their  women.  It  ex- 
tended first  through  the  centers  about  the  Bowery,  Second 
Avenue,  and  Chatham  Square,  and  finally  to  the  associated 
summer  headquarters  at  Coney  Island.  Then,  suddenly,  Gen- 
eral Bingham  was  removed  by  Mayor  McClellan. 

The  various  interests  dependent  upon  the  procuring  and 
sale  of  women  considered  this  event  their  first  victory.  But 
now  all  eyes  of  these  people  are  concentrated  on  the  main 
issue  this  fall.  Will  or  will  not  Tammany  be  elected?  The 
whole  future  of  their  career  in  New  York  hangs  upon  the  issue 
of  this  event.  And  they  are  preparing  to  work  for  the  Demo- 
cratic party  with  every  means  in  their  power. 

The  Rebates  of  the  Slum  Politician. 

The  exploitation  of  a  popular  government  by  the  slum  poli- 
tician is  a  curious  thing,  always.  I  sat  some  time  ago  with  a 
veteran  politician,  for  many  years  one  of  the  leading  election 
district  captains  of  the  Tammany  Bowery  organization,  con- 
versing soviably  in  the  parlor  of  his  profitable  Raines-law 
hotel. 

"The  people  love  Tammany  Hall,"  said  my  host.  "We 
use  'em  right.  When  a  widow's  in  trouble,  we  see  she  has  her 
hod  of  coal;  when  the  orphans  want  a  pair  of  shoes,  we  give 
it  to  them." 

It  was  truly  and  earnestly  said.  As  he  spoke,  the  other  half 
of  the  political  financing  was  shown.     The  procession  of  the 


106  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

daughters  of  the  East  Side  filed  by  the  open  door  upstairs 
with  their  strange  men.  It  was  the  slum  leader's  common 
transaction.  Having  wholesaled  the  bodies  of  the  daughters 
at  good  profit,  he  rebates  the  widow 's  hod  of  coal. 

The  so-called  "human  quality"  is  the  threadbare  defense 
of  slum  politics.  But  all  its  charitable  transactions  have  been 
amply  financed.  From  the  earliest  time  is  has  been  the  same 
old  system  of  rebates  to  the  poor.  First  the  rebate  of  the 
tenement  saloon  at  the  death  of  the  drunken  laborer;  then, 
the  rebate  from  the  raking-up  of  the  last  miserable  pennies  of 
the  clerk  and  laborer  and  scrubwoman,  by  the  pool-rooms  and 
policy ;  and  now,  smiling  its  same  old  hearty  smile,  it  extends 
to  the  widow  and  orphan  its  rebates  from  the  bodies  of  the 
daughters  of  the  poor. 

It  is  a  source  of  perennial  wonder  how  much  longer  the 
poorer  classes  will  be  cajoled  and  threatened  and  swindled 
into  taking  them. 

The  issues  of  the  coming  campaign  for  the  control  of  New 
York  City  have  been  framed  in  charges  to  enlist  all  classes 
of  the  people  against  Tammany  Hall.  For  the  rich,  the  great 
tax  rate  for  wasted  and  misappropriated  money ;  for  the  citi- 
zen of  average  means,  the  inadequate  schools,  dirty  highways, 
burglaries,  and  violence  upon  the  public  streets.  There  is  a 
perennial  issue  for  the  people  of  the  tenement  districts.  Shall 
New  York  City  continue  to  be  the  recruiting-ground  for  the 
collection  for  market  of  young  women  by  politically  organ- 
ized procurers?  The  only  practical  way  to  stop  it  will  be  by 
the  defeat  of  Tammany  Hall. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


We  shall  continue  the  story  of  this  black  crime,  as  told 
by  Edward  W.  Sims,  United  States  District  Attorney  of 
Chicago,  and  Clifford  E.  Roe,  Assistant  State's  Attorney  of 
Illinois.  Also  Harry  A.  Parkins,  Assistant  United  States 
District  Attorney.  These  articles  were  given  to  the  "Wo- 
man's World."  and  by  their  permission  reprinted  in  full  in 
this  book. 

We  prefer  to  give  the  facts  as  they  tell  them.  Surely  no 
one  would  think  of  disputing  these  statements  made  by  repu- 
table officers. 

THE  WHITE  SLAVE  TRADE  OF  TO-DAY. 


By  Edwin  W.  Sims,  United  States  District  Attorney,  Chicago. 

Mr.  Sims  says:  "There  are  some  things  so  far  removed 
from  the  lives  of  normal,  decent  people  as  to  be  simply  un- 
believable by  them.  The  "white  slave"  trade  of  to-day  is 
one  of  these  incredible  things.  The  calmest,  simplest  state- 
ments of  its  facts  are  almost  beyond  the  comprehension  or  be- 
lief of  men  and  women  who  are  mercifully  spared  from  con- 
tact with  the  dark  and  hideous  secrets  of  "the  under  world" 
of  the  big  cities. 

You  would  hardly  credit  the  statement,  for  example,  that 
things  are  being  done  every  day  in  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
Chicago  and  other  large  cities  of  this  country  in  the  white  slave 
traffic  which  would,  by  contrast,  make  the  Congo  slave  traders 
of  the  old  days  appear  like  Good  Samaritans.    Yet  this  figure  is 

107 


108  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

almost  a  literal  truth.  The  man  of  the  stone  age  who  clubbed 
the  woman  of  his  desire  into  insensibility  or  submission  was 
little  short  of  a  high-minded  gentleman  when  contrasted  with 
the  men  who  fatten  upon  the  ' '  white  slave ' '  traffic  in  this  day 
of  social  settlements,  of  forward  movements,  of  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
and  Christian  Endeavor  activities,  of  air  ships  and  wireless 
telegraphy. 

Naturally,  wisely,  every  parent  who  reads  this  statement 
will  at  once  raise  the  question :  "What  excuse  is  there  for  the 
open  discussion  of  such  a  revolting  condition  of  things  in 
the  pages  of  a  household  magazine?  What  good  is  there  to 
be  served  by  flaunting  so  dark  and  disgusting  a  subject  before 
the  family  circle?" 

Only  one — and  that  is  a  reason  and  not  an  excuse!  The 
recent  examination  of  more  than  two  hundred  "white  slaves" 
by  the  office  of  the  United  States  District  Attorney  at  Chi- 
cago has  brought  to  light  the  fact  that  literally  thousands 
of  innocent  girls  from  the  country  districts  are  every  year 
entrapped  into  a  life  of  hopeless  slavery  and  degradation 
because  parents  in  the  country  do  not  understand  conditions 
as  they  exist  and  how  to  protect  their  daughters  from  the 
"white  slave"  traders  who  have  reduced  the  art  of  ruining 
young  girls  to  a  national  and  international  system.  I  sin- 
cerely believe  that  nine-tenths  of  the  parents  of  these  thou- 
sands of  girls  who  are  every  year  snatched  from  lives  of 
decency  and  comparative  peace  and  dragged  under  the  slime 
of  an  existence  in  the  "white  slave  world"  have  no  idea  that 
there  is  really  a  trade  in  the  ruin  of  girls  as  much  as  there 
is  a  trade  in  cattle  or  sheep  or  other  products  of  the  farm. 
If  these  parents  had  known  the  real  conditions,  had  believed 
that  there  is  actually  a  syndicate  which  does  as  regular,  as 
steady  and  persistent  a  "business"  in  the  ruination  of  girls 


The  White  Slave  Trade  of  To-day.  109 

as  the  great  packing  houses  do  in  the  sale  of  meats,  it  is 
wholly  probable  that  their  daughters  would  not  now  be  in 
dens  of  vice  and  almost  utterly  without  hope  of  release  ex- 
cepting by  the  hand  of  death. 

Is  not  this,  then,  reason  enough  for  a  little  plain  speech 
to  parents?  I  understand  that  the  "Woman's  World"  every 
month  goes  into  two  million  American  homes — average,  repre- 
sentative home  of  the  common  people — and  that  most  of  these 
homes  are  outside  of  the  big  cities.  This  is  why  I  have  con- 
sented to  respond  to  the  request  of  a  publisher  who  is  cour- 
ageous enough  to  touch  upon  this  forbidden  topic.  No  other 
consideration  would  move  me  to  write  upon  this  topic. 

The  purpose  of  all  our  laws  and  statutes  against  crime 
is  the  suppression  of  crime.  The  protection  of  the  people, 
of  the  home,  of  the  individual  is  the  purpose  which  inspires 
the  honest  and  conscientious  prosecutor.  This  is  what  the 
law  is  for,  and  if  this  result  of  protection  to  individuals  and 
homes  can  be  made  more  effective  and  more  general  by  a 
statement  such  as  this,  then  I  am  willing  to  make  it  for 
the  public  good.  And  the  most  direct  and  unadorned  state- 
ment of  facts  will,  I  think,  carry  its  own  conviction  and  make 
everything  like  "preaching"  or  denunciation  superfluous. 

The  evidence  obtained  from  questioning  250  girls  taken 
within  the  last  four  weeks  in  Chicago  houses  of  ill  repute 
leads  me  to  believe  that  not  fewer  than  fifteen  thousand 
girls  have  been  imported  into  this  country  in  the  last  year  as 
white  slaves.  Of  course  this  is  only  a  guess — an  approximate 
— it  could  be  nothing  else — but  my  own  personal  belief  is 
that  it  is  a  conservative  guess  and  well  within  the  facts  as  to 
numbers.  Then  please  remember  that  girls  imported  are 
certainly  but  a  mere  fraction  of  the  number  recruited  for 
the  army  of  prostitution  from  home  fields,  from  the  cities,  the 


110  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

towns,  the  villages  of  our  own  country.    There  is  no  possible 
escape  from  this  conclusion. 

Another  significant  fact  brought  out  by  the  examination 
of  these  girls  is  that  practically  every  one  who  admitted  hav- 
ing parents  living  begged  that  her  real  name  be  withheld  from 
the  public  because  of  the  sorrow  and  shame  it  would  bring  to 
her  parents.  One  said:  "My  mother  thinks  I  am  studying 
in  a  stenographic  school;"  another  stated,  "My  parents  in 
the  country  think  I  have  a  good  position  in  a  department 
store — as  I  did  have  for  a  time — and  I've  sent  them  a  little 
money  from  time  to  time;  I  don't  care  what  happens,  so  long 
as  they  don 't  know  the  truth  about  me. "  In  a  word,  the  one 
concern  of  nearly  all  those  examined  who  have  homes  in  this 
country  was  that  their  parents — and  in  particular  their 
mothers — might  discover,  through  the  prosecution  of  the 
"white  slavers,"  that  they  were  leading  lives  of  shame  in- 
stead of  working  at  the  honorable  callings  which  they  had 
left  their  homes  and  come  to  the  city  to  pursue.  There  are, 
to  put  it  mildly,  hundreds — yes,  thousands — of  trusting 
mothers  in  the  smaller  cities,  the  towns,  villages,  and  farm- 
ing communities  of  the  United  States  who  believe  that  their 
daughters  are  "getting  on  fine"  in  the  city,  and  too  busy  to 
come  home  for  a  visit  or  "to  write  much,"  while  the  fact  is 
that  these  daughters  have  been  swept  into  the  gulf  of  white 
slavery — the  worst  doom  that  can  befall  a  woman.  The  mother 
who  has  allowed  her  girl  to  go  to  the  big  city  and  work  should 
find  out  what  kind  of  life  that  girl  is  living  and  find  out  from 
some  other  source  than  the  girl  herself.  No  matter  how  good 
and  fine  a  girl  she  has  been  at  home,  and  how  complete  the 
confidence  she  has  always  inspired,  find  out  how  she  is  living, 
what  kind  of  associations  she  is  keeping.  Take  nothing  for 
granted.    You  owe  it  to  yourself  and  to  her  and  it  is  not  dis- 


The  White  Slave  Trade  of  To-day.  Ill 

loyalty  to  go  beyond  her  own  words  for  evidence  that  the 
wolves  of  the  city  have  not  dragged  her  from  safe  paths. 
It  is,  instead,  the  highest  form  of  loyalty  to  her. 

Again,  there  is,  in  another  particular,  a  remarkable  and 
impressive  sameness,  in  the  stories  related  by  these  wretched 
girls.  In  the  narratives  of  nearly  all  of  them  is  a  passage 
describing  how  some  man  of  their  acquaintance  had  offered 
to  "help"  them  to  a  good  position  in  the  city,  to  "look  after" 
them  and  to  "take  an  interest"  in  them.  After  listening  to 
this  confession  from  one  girl  after  another,  hour  after  hour 
until  you  have  heard  it  repeated  perhaps  fifty  times,  you  feel 
like  saying  to  every  mother  in  the  country :  Do  not  trust  any 
man  who  pretends  to  take  an  interest  in  your  girl  if  that  in- 
terest involves  her  leaving  her  own  roof.  Keep  her  with  you. 
She  is  far  safer  in  the  country  than  in  the  big  city,  but  if, 
go  to  the  city  she  must,  then  go  with  her  yourself;  if  that  is 
impossible,  place  her  with  some  woman  who  is  your  friend, 
not  hers;  no  girl  can  safely  go  to  a  great  city  to  make  her 
own  way  who  is  not  under  the  eye  of  a  trustworthy  woman 
who  knows  the  ways  and  dangers  of  city  life.  Above  all, 
distrust  the  "protection,"  the  "good  offices"  of  any  man 
who  is  not  a  family  friend  known  to  be  clean  and  honorable 
and  above  all  suspicion. 

Of  course  all  the  examinations  to  which  I  have  referred 
have  been  conducted  for  the  specific  purpose  of  finding  girls 
who  have  been  brought  into  this  country  from  other  lands  in 
defiance  of  the  Federal  statute,  passed  by  Congress  February 
20,  1907.  This  act  declares  that  any  person  who  who  shall 
"keep,  maintain,  support  or  harbor"  any  alien  woman  for 
immoral  purposes  within  three  years  after  her  arrival  in  this 
country  shall  be  guilty  of  a  misdemeanor  and  shall  be  liable 
to  a  fine  of  $5,000  and  imprisonment  for  five  years  at  the 


112  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

discretion  of  the  court.  "When  a  department  of  justice  at 
Washington  decided  that  this  law  was  being  violated,  the 
United  States  District  Attorney  at  Chicago  was  instructed  to 
take  such  action  as  was  necessary  to  apprehend  the  violators 
of  the  act  and  convict  them.  One  of  the  first  steps  required 
was  the  raiding  of  the  various  dives  and  houses  of  ill  fame 
and  the  arrest  of  the  girl  inmates,  as  well  as  the  arrest  of  the 
keepers  and  the  procurers  of  the  white  slaves. 

While  the  Federal  prosecution  is  officially  concerned  only 
with  those  cases  involving  the  importation  of  girls  from  other 
countries — there  being  no  authority  under  the  present  na- 
tional statutes  for  the  Federal  Government  to  proscute  those 
concerned  in  securing  white  slaves  who  are  natives  of  this 
country — it  was  inevitable  that  the  examination  of  scores  of 
these  inmates,  captured  in  raids  upon  the  dives,  should  bring 
to  officers  and  agents  of  the  department  of  justice  an  immense 
fund  of  information  regarding  the  methods  of  the  white  slave 
traders  in  recruiting  for  their  traffic  from  home  fields. 

Whether  these  hunters  of  the  innocent  ply  their  awful  call- 
ing at  home  or  abroad  their  methods  are  much  the  same — 
with  the  exception  that  the  foreign  girl  is  more  hopelessly 
at  their  mercy.  Let  me  take  the  case  of  a  little  Italian  peasant 
girl  who  helped  her  father  till  the  soil  in  the  vineyards  and 
fields  near  Naples.  Like  most  of  the  others  taken  in  the  raids, 
she  stoutly  maintained  that  she  had  been  in  this  country  more 
than  three  years  and  that  she  was  in  a  life  of  shame  from 
choice  and  not  through  the  criminal  act  of  any  person.  When 
she  was  brought  into  what  the  sensational  newspapers  would 
call  the  "sweat  box"  it  was  clear  that  she  was  in  a  state  of 
abject  terror.  Soon,  however,  Asst.  United  States  District  At- 
torney Parkin,  having  charge  of  the  examination,  convinced 
her  that  he  and  his  associates  were  her  friends  and  protectors 


The  White  Slave  Trade  of  To-day.  113 

and  that  their  purpose  was  to  punish  those  who  had  profited 
by  her  ruin  and  to  send  her  back  to  her  little  Italian  home 
with  all  her  expenses  paid ;  that  she  was  under  the  protection 
of  the  United  States  and  was  as  safe  as  if  the  king  of  Italy- 
would  take  her  under  his  royal  care  and  pledge  his  word  that 
her  enemies  should  not  have  revenge  upon  her. 

Then  she  broke  down  and  with  pitiful  sobs  related  her  awful 
narrative.  That  every  word  of  it  was  true  no  one  could  doubt 
who  saw  her  as  she  told  it.  Briny  this  is  her  story:  A  "fine 
lady"  who  wore  beautiful  clothes  came  to  her  where  she  lived 
with  her  parents,  made  friends  with  her,  told  her  she  was 
uncommonly  pretty  (the  truth,  by  the  way),  and  professed 
a  great  interest  in  her.  Such  flattering  attentions  from  an 
American  lady  who  wore  clothes  as  fine  as  those  of  the  Italian 
nobility  could  have  but  one  effect  on  the  mind  of  this  simple 
little  peasant  girl  and  on  her  still  simpler  parents.  Their 
heads  were  completely  turned  and  they  regarded  the  ' '  Ameri- 
can lady"  with  almost  adoration. 

Very  shrewdly  the  woman  did  not  attempt  to  bring  the 
little  girl  back  with  her,  but  held  out  hope  that  some  day  a 
letter  might  come  with  money  for  her  passage  to  America. 
Once  there  she  would  become  the  companion  of  her  American 
friend  and  they  would  have  great  times  together. 

Of  course,  in  due  time,  the  money  came — and  the  $100 
was  a  most  substantial  pledge  to  the  parents  of  the  wealth 
and  generosity  of  the  ' '  American  lady. ' '  Unhesitatingly  she 
was  prepared  for  the  voyage  which  was  to  take  her  to  the 
land  of  happiness  and  good  fortune.  According  to  the  ar- 
rangements made  by  letter  the  girl  was  met  at  New  York  by 
two  "friends"  of  her  benefactress  who  attended  to  her  en- 
trance papers  and  took  her  in  charge.  These  "friends"  were 
two  of  the  most  brutal  of  all  the  white  slave  drivers  who  are 


114  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

in  the  traffic.  At  this  time  she  was  about  sixteen  years  old, 
innocent  and  rarely  attractive  for  a  girl  of  her  class,  having 
the  large,  handsome  eyes,  the  black  hair  and  the  rich  olive 
skin  of  a  typical  Italian. 

"Where  these  two  men  took  her  she  did  not  know — but  by 
the  most  violent  and  brutal  means  they  quickly  accomplished 
her  ruin.  For  a  week  she  was  subjected  to  unspeakable  treat- 
ment and  made  to  feel  that  her  degradation  was  complete  and 
final. 

And  here  let  it  be  said  that  the  breaking  of  the  spirit,  the 
crushing  of  all  hope  for  any  future  save  that  of  shame  is 
always  a  part  of  the  initiation  of  a  white  slave.  Then  the 
girl  was  shipped  on  to  Chicago,  where  she  was  disposed  of 
to  the  keeper  of  an  Italian  dive  of  the  vilest  type.  On  her 
entrance  here  she  was  furnished  with  gaudy  dresses  and  wear- 
ing apparel  for  which  the  keeper  of  the  place  charged  her 
$600.  As  is  the  case  with  all  new  white  slaves  she  was  not 
allowed  to  have  any  clothing  which  she  could  wear  upon  the 
street. 

Her  one  object  in  life  was  to  escape  from  the  den  in  which 
she  was  held  a  prisoner.  To  "pay  out"  seemed  the  surest 
way,  and  at  length,  from  her  wages  of  shame,  she  was  able 
to  cancel  the  $600  account.  Then  she  asked  for  her  street 
clothing  and  her  release — only  to  be  told  that  she  had  incurred 
other  expenses  to  the  amount  of  $400. 

Her  Italian  blood  took  fire  at  this  and  she  made  a  dash 
for  liberty.  But  she  was  not  quick  enough  and  the  hand  of 
the  oppressor  was  upon  her.  In  the  wild  scene  that  followed 
she  was  slashed  with  a  razor,  one  gash  straight  through  her 
right  eye,  one  across  her  cheek  and  another  slitting  her  ear. 
Then  she  was  given  medical  attention  and  the  wounds  gradu- 


The  White  Slave  Trade  of  To-day.  115 

ally  healed,  but  her  face  was  horribly  mutilated,  her  right 
eye  is  always  open  and  to  look  upon  her  is  to  shudder. 

When  the  raids  began  she  was  seeereted  and  arrangements 
made  to  ship  her  to  a  dive  in  the  mining  regions  of  the  west. 
Fortunately,  however,  a  few  hours  before  she  was  to  start 
upon  her  journey  the  United  States  marshals  raided  the  place 
and  captured  herself  as  well  as  her  keepers.  To  add  to  the 
horror  of  her  situation  she  was  soon  to  become  a  mother.  The 
awful  thought  in  her  mind,  however,  was  to  escape  from  as- 
sassination at  the  hands  of  the  murderous  gang  which  op- 
pressed her. 

One  recital  of  this  kind  is  enough,  although  instances  by 
the  score  might  be  cited  which  differ  only  in  detail  and  degree. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  say  that  the  legal  evidence  thus  far 
collected  establishes  with  complete  moral  certainty  these  awful 
facts:  That  the  white  slave  traffic  is  a  system — a  syndicate 
which  has  its  ramifications  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  with  "clearing  houses"  or  "distributing  cen- 
ters" in  nearly  all  of  the  larger  cities;  that  in  this  ghastly 
traffic  the  buying  price  of  a  goung  girl  is  $15,  and  that  the 
selling  price  is  generally  about  $200 — if  the  girl  is  especially 
attractive  the  white  slave  dealer  may  be  able  to  sell  her  for 
$400  or  $600;  that  this  syndicate  did  not  make  less  than 
$220,000  last  year  in  this  almost  unthinkable  commerce;  that 
it  is  a  definite  organization  sending  its  hunters  regularly  to 
scour  France,  Germany,  Hungary,  Italy  and  Canada  for  vic- 
tims ;  that  the  man  at  the  head  of  this  unthinkable  enterprise 
is  known  among  his  hunters  as  "The  Big  Chief." 

Also  the  evidence  shows  that  the  hirelings  of  this  traffic 
are  stationed  at  certain  ports  of  entry  in  Canada,  where 
large  numbers  of  immigrants  are  landed,  to  do  what  is  known 
in  their  parlance  as  "cutting  out  work."     In  other  words, 


116  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

these  watchers  for  human  prey  scan  the  immigrants  as  they 
come  down  the  gang  plank  of  a  vessel  which  has  just  arrived 
and  "spot"  the  girls  who  are  unaccompanied  by  fathers, 
mothers,  brothers  or  relatives  to  protect  them.  The  girl  who 
has  been  spotted  as  a  desirable  and  unprotected  victim  is 
properly  approached  by  a  man  who  speaks  her  language  and 
is  immediately  offered  employment  at  good  wages,  with  all 
expenses  to  the  destination  to  be  paid  by  the  man.  Most  fre- 
quently laundry  work  is  the  bait  held  out,  sometimes  house- 
work or  employment  in  a  candy  shop  or  factory. 

The  object  of  the  negotiations  is  to  "cut  out"  the  girl  from 
any  of  her  associates  and  to  get  her  to  go  with  him.  Then  the 
only  is  to  accomplish  her  ruin  by  the  shortest  route.  If  they 
cannot  be  cajoled  or  enticed  by  promises  of  an  easy  time, 
plenty  of  money,  fine  clothes  and  the  usual  stock  of  allure- 
ments— or  a  fake  marriage — then  harsher  methods  are  re- 
sorted to.  In  some  instances  the  hunters  really  marry  the 
victims.  As  to  the  sterner  methods,  it  is  of  course  impossible 
to  speak  explicitly,  beyond  the  statement  that  intoxication 
and  drugging  are  often  used  as  means  to  reduce  the  victims 
to  a  state  of  helplessness,  and  sheer  physical  violence  is  a 
common  thing. 

"When  once  a  white  slave  is  sold  and  landed  in  a  house  or 
dive  she  becomes  a  prisoner.  The  raids  disclosed  the  fact  that 
in  each  of  these  places  is  a  room  having  but  one  door,  to 
which  the  keeper  holds  the  key.  In  here  are  locked  all  the 
street  clothes,  shoes  and  the  ordinary  apparel  of  a  woman. 

The  finery  which  is  provided  for  the  girl  for  house  wear 
is  of  a  nature  to  make  her  appearance  on  the  street  impos- 
sible. Then  added  to  this  handicap,  is  the  fact  that  at  once 
the  girl  is  placed  in  debt  to  the  keeper  for  a  wardrobe  of 
"fancy"  clothes  which  are  charged  to  her  at  preposterous 


The  White  Slave  Trade  of  To-day.  117 

prices.  She  cannot  escape  while  she  is  in  debt  to  the  keeper 
— and  she  is  never  allowed  to  get  out  of  debt — at  least  until 
all  desire  to  leave  the  life  is  dead  within  her. 

The  examination  of  witnesses  have  brought  out  the  fact  that 
not  many  of  the  women  in  this  class  expect  to  live  more  than 
ten  years  after  they  enter  upon  their  voluntary  or  involuntary 
life  of  white  slavery.  Perhaps  the  average  is  less  than  that. 
Many  died  painful  deaths  by  disease,  many  by  consumption, 
but  it  is  hardly  beyond  the  truth  to  say  that  suicide  is  their 
general  expectation.  "We  all  come  to  it  sooner  or  later," 
one  of  the  witnesses  remarked  to  her  companions  in  the  jail, 
the  other  day,  when  reading  in  the  newspaper  of  the  suicide  of 
a  girl  inmate  of  a  notorious  house. 

A  volume  could  be  written  on  this  revolting  subject,  but  I 
have  no  disposition  to  add  a  single  word  to  what  will  open 
the  eyes  of  parents  to  the  fact  that  white  slavery  is  an  exist- 
ing condition — a  system  of  girl  hunting  that  is  national  and 
international  in  its  scope,  that  it  literally  consumes  thousands 
of  girls — clean,  innocent  girls — every  year ;  that  it  is  operated 
with  a  cruelty,  a  barbarism  that  gives  a  new  meaning  to  the 
word  fiend;  that  it  is  an  imminent  peril  to  every  girl  in  the 
country  who  has  a  desire  to  get  into  the  city  and  taste  its  ex- 
citements and  its  pleasures. 

The  facts  I  have  stated  are  for  the  awakening  of  parents 
and  guardians  of  girls.  If  I  were  to  presume  to  say  anything 
to  the  possible  victims  of  this  awful  scourge  of  white  slavery 
it  would  be  this :  ' '  Those  who  enter  here  leave  hope  behind ; ' ' 
the  depths  of  debasement  and  suffering  disclosed  by  the  in- 
vestigation now  in  progress  would  make  the  flesh  of  a  seasoned 
man  of  the  world  creep  with  horror  and  shame." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Roe. 

No  language  can  describe  the  horrors  of  the  white  slave 
traffic.  It  is  so  beastly,  so  repulsive,  so  shocking  that  it  stag- 
gers the  senses.  It  seems  like  a  hideous  nightmare  of  hell  and 
yet  it  is  a  fact  of  our  everyday  life  under  capitalism,  and  so 
engrossing  is  the  struggle  for  existence  that  but  little  atten- 
tion is  paid  to  this  unspeakable  traffic  in  the  bodies  and  souls 
of  innocent  girls  who  are  deceived  by  human  tarantulas  and 
lured  to  their  ruin  and  death. 

It  is  widespread,  even  international.  It  proved  so  appalling 
and  the  public  was  so  unaware  of  the  existence  of  the  preda- 
tory monster  that  the  " Woman's  World"  told  its  2,000,000 
readers,  in  two  tremendous  articles  by  United  States  District 
Attorney  Sims  of  Chicago,  the  facts — warned  them,  so  that 
they  and  the  country  in  general  might  be  forearmed. 

Thus  was  it  revealed  to  the  people  that  there  is  a  white  slave 
traffic. 

The  disgraceful  facts  are  these : 

Some  65,000  daughters  of  American  homes  and  15,000  alien 
girls  are  the  prey  each  year  of  procurers  in  this  traffic,  ac- 
cording to  authoritative  estimates.  Even  marriage  is  used  as 
one  of  the  diabolical  methods  of  capturing  girlhood  and  young 
womanhood  and  "breaking  them  in"  to  a  life  of  shame. 

They  are  hunted,  trapped  in  a  thousand  ways;  trapped, 
wing-broken,  sold — sold  for  less  than  hogs! — and  h^d  »n  white 
slavery  worse  than  death. 

118 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Eoe.  119 

The  daughters  of  all  of  us,  our  sisters,  even  our  wives  are 
looked  upon  as  prey  for  the  white  slave  traffic. 

Here  is  the  story  in  full,  as  told  by  Clifford  E.  Roe,  As- 
sistant State's  Attorney  of  Illinois: 

There  is  a  problem  of  slavery  to-day  for  the  people  to  solve. 
The  question  is:  "How  shall  the  warfare  against  "White 
Slavery  be  waged  to  blot  out  this  cloud  upon  civilization  ex- 
peditiously ? "  Over  two  years  ago  I  learned  that  there  was 
a  gigantic  slave  trade  in  women,  and  with  a  handful  of  people 
we  began  to  fight  the  traders.  That  a  system  of  slavery,  de- 
basing and  vile,  had  grown  to  enormous  proportions  before 
our  very  doors  seemed  beyond  belief,  an  impossibility,  and 
even  romantic.  Most  people  were  skeptical  of  the  existence 
of  a  well  defined  and  organized  traffic  in  girls,  and  they  seemed 
to  think  that  those  advocating  the  abolition  of  this  nefarious 
trade  were  either  visionists  or  fanatics.  The  struggle  against 
this  trade  in  women  was  a  hard  one  at  first.  The  ministry, 
although  dazed,  were  finally  aroused  to  an  appreciation  of  the 
truth. 

Having  faith  in  the  people,  and  believing  that  this  republic 
lauds  and  honors  the  chastity  and  sanctity  of  women,  I  be- 
lieved in  bringing  this  hideous  traffic  in  girls  to  the  public 
notice,  and  when  our  citizens  fully  realized  its  importance 
they  would  rise  to  the  occasion  and  aid  in  the  warfare  to  ex- 
terminate white  slavery.  The  result  has  been  most  gratifying, 
for  churches,  clubs,  associations,  newspapers,  men  and  women 
in  all  walks  of  life  have  taken  up  the  cause.  Great  armies 
like  those  of  a  generation  ago  cannot  uproot  this  slavery,  but 
the  slavery  of  to-day  must  be  eliminated  by  publicity,  educa- 
tion, legislation  and  law  enforcement.  That  is  the  reason  the 
"Woman's  "World"  has  brought  to  its  readers  facts  concern- 
ing this  hideous  trade.    The  results  of  this  heroic  work  have 


120  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

been  wonderful,  for  thousands  of  letters  inquiring  about  white 
slavery  have  been  received,  and  associations  and  clubs  have 
formed  to  fight  white  slavery,  and  legislation  upon  the  sub- 
ject has  been  introduced  in  many  states.  If  this  great  good 
to  our  social  life  could  not  be  brought  about  by  publicity, 
there  would  not  be  any  reason  for  bringing  before  the  people 
and  into  the  midst  of  the  family  circle  facts  which  are  so  black 
and  revolting.  But  to  know  and  understand  we  must  cast 
aside  false  modesty,  take  off  our  kid  gloves  and  handle  this 
great  social  problem  with  our  naked  hands. 

The  trade  in  women  is  domestic  and  foreign,  local  and  in- 
ternational. The  Honorable  Edwin  W.  Sims  and  Harry  A. 
Parkin,  Assistant  United  States  District  Attorney  in  Chicago, 
have  been  waging  valiant  warfare  against  the  foreign  and  in- 
ternational trade  during  the  past  year.  The  preceding  ar- 
ticles in  this  magazine  written  by  them  have  dealt  chiefly  with 
that  phase  of  the  white  slave  trade.  They  have  explained, 
also,  the  debt  system  as  a  means  of  keeping  the  girls  in  resorts 
after  they  are  procured  and  sold.  It  is  with  the  domestic  and 
local  trade  I  have  been  mostly  concerned.  In  Chicago  alone 
there  are  more  than  25,000  women  leading  a  life  of  shame,  and 
statistics  show  that  the  average  life  of  a  fallen  woman  is  five 
years.  Five  thousand  persons  must,  therefore,  be  recruited 
every  year  in  Chicago  alone.  How  many  voluntarily  go  into 
this  life  ?  It  is  estimated  that  about  twenty  per  cent. !  This 
shows  us  that  eighty  per  cent,  are  led  into  it  by  some  scheme 
or  entrapped  and  sold,  and  at  least  two-thirds  of  this  number 
are  from  our  own  country,  being  inveigled  from  farms,  towns 
and  cities.  One  may  inquire,  "How  is  that  girls  are  procured 
so  easily  without  the  public  being  aware  of  what  is  going  on?" 

The  answer  is  that  love  and  ambition  are  the  baits  which 
the  procurers  flaunt  in  the  facts  of  their  proposed  victims. 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Koe.  121 

Often  it  happens  that  promises  of  positions  on  the  stage,  in 
stores,  and  various  occupations  alluring  to  young  girls  cause 
many  to  fall,  captives  in  the  great  net  set  for  them. 

During  the  past  two  years  there  have  been  more  than  two 
hundred  and  fifty  white  slave  cases  tried  in  Chicago  under 
the  Illinois  law,  resulting  in  scores  of  confessions  made  by  the 
procurers,  and  statements  by  hundreds  of  the  girls  who  were 
procured  as  to  the  methods  employed  by  the  traders. 

To  show  how  easily  it  is  done,  let  me  tell  you  a  story  of  a 
girl  from  Elgin,  Illinois,  who  was  caught  by  the  love  scheme. 
One  day  this  pretty  little  German  lass  was  in  a  Chicago  store 
buying  sheet  music  when  a  well-dressed,  handsome  young 
man,  apparently  looking  at  music,  too,  asked  her  the  names  of 
some  of  the  latest  popular  songs,  as  he  wanted  to  buy  them. 
At  first  she  turned  away  and  did  not  heed  him,  but  he  was 
not  to  be  repulsed,  and  pressing  his  attentions  further  upon 
her,  he  finally  engaged  her  in  conversation.  A  luncheon  at  a 
nearby  restaurant,  in  which  she  joined  him,  was  the  result, 
and  there  he  told  her  how  at  first  sight  he  had  fallen  in  love 
with  her  beauty.  After  lunch  he  suggested  a  visit  to  his 
bachelor  apartments,  but  this  she  refused.  Seeing  that  this 
plan  was  a  failure,  he  asked  her  to  marry  him  then  and  there. 
The  silly  girl,  believing  he  loved  her,  and  enchanted  by  the 
picture  he  had  painted  of  his  father 's  wealth  and  fine  home  in 
New  York  City,  consented,  and  they  were  married.  After 
the  ceremony  he  told  her  that  he  was  about ' '  broke, ' '  and  said 
that  he  would  take  her  to  a  place  where  she  could  make 
enough  money  in  a  few  days  to  pay  their  way  to  New  York, 
where  everything  would  be  lovely,  and  as  they  were  married 
it  would  be  no  one's  business  how  she  got  the  money.  Im- 
mediately accounts  of  white  slaver  procurers  which  she  had 
read  came  to  her  mind,  and  she  then  realized  what  she  had 


122  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

fallen  into.  Lest  she  might  arouse  in  him  suspicion,  she  con- 
sented to  do  as  he  asked,  but  told  him  that  before  going  out 
to  the  resort  she  wanted  to  buy  some  clothing,  and  arranged 
to  meet  him  at  a  certain  downtown  corner  toward  evening. 
She  hurried  to  the  County  Court,  where  an  escort  was  given 
her,  and  she  was  brought  to  the  court  where  I  was  prosecuting. 
I  armed  an  officer  with  a  warrant  and  he  followed  the  girl  to 
the  appointed  place  of  meeting.  The  young  man  was  there 
waiting  for  his  victim.  The  officer  stepped  up  and  put  him 
under  arrest,  and  the  next  day  he  was  tried  and  convicted.  It 
was  then  learned  that  he  was  a  well  known  procurer  of  girls. 
Thus  saved  from  a  life  of  ruin,  the  Elgin  girl  went  home 
heart-broken,  but  wiser  for  her  experience.  Recently  she 
secured  in  the  County  Court  an  annulment  of  the  marriage. 
Inquiry  proved  that  the  girl  was  from  a  very  respectable 
home,  and  that  she  had  always  been  a  good,  honest,  industri- 
ous girl.  Many  similar  cases  have  come  out  in  the  courts; 
however,  the  girls  in  most  instances  were  not  favored  by  the 
same  good  fortune  which  blessed  the  little  girl  from  Elgin, 
and  the  outcome  was  much  more  disastrous.  This  is  an  il- 
lustration of  the  ease  with  which  panderers  make  use  of  love 
as  a  means  of  securing  girls  for  immoral  houses. 

The  other  method  used  by  the  traders  is  the  one  which  ap- 
peals to  the  girl's  ambition.  Sometimes  the  procurers  have 
gained  the  parents'  consent  to  allow  their  daughters  to  accom- 
pany the  supposed  theatrical  or  employment  agent,  as  the  case 
may  be,  to  some  city,  thinking  that  through  the  daughter's 
success  their  station  in  life  would  be  raised.  A  girl  in  a 
country  community,  or  say  factory  town,  is  working  for  four 
or  five  dollars  each  week,  when  one  of  these  procurers,  travel- 
ing under  the  guise  of  an  agent,  meets  her  and  promises  ten  to 
twenty  dollars  a  week  for  work  in  the  city.    She  may  be  per- 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Roe.  123 

fectly  sincere  and  honest  in  her  intention  to  better  her  con- 
dition. She  may  want  finer  clothes,  a  wider  knowledge  of  the 
world,  or  an  education,  and  so  she  consents  to  go  with  him, 
and  finally,  against  her  will,  ends  up  as  an  inmate  in  some  im- 
moral place. 

One  of  the  most  recent  cases  shows  how  readily  girls  jump 
at  an  opportunity  to  better  their  station  in  life.  This  case  first 
came  before  the  court  the  day  after  last  Christmas,  when 
Frank  Kelly  was  arrested  for  carrying  a  revolver,  with  which 
he  tried  to  shoot  an  old  man.  During  the  trial  the  story  de- 
veloped as  follows: 

A  year  ago  last  summer  fifteen-year-old  Margaret  Smith 
was  working  about  the  simple  home  near  Benton  Harbor, 
Michigan.  The  father,  employed  by  the  Pere  Marquette  Rail- 
road, was  away  from  home  a  good  share  of  the  time.  One  day 
a  graphophone  agent  called  at  the  house  and  the  family  be- 
came much  interested  in  one  of  his  musical  machines.  Shortly 
afterward  this  agent  brought  with  him  to  the  Smith  home 
Frank  Kelly,  and  introduced  him  to  Maggie,  as  she  was  called 
by  her  folks.  In  a  day  or  two  Margaret  was  on  her  way  to 
Chicago  with  Kelly,  who  promised  her  an  excellent  position 
in  the  city.  Upon  their  arrival  Margaret  was  sold  into  one 
of  the  lowest  dives  in  Chicago,  located  in  South  Clark  Street, 
and  owned  by  an  Italian  named  Battista  Pizza.  Here  she 
learned  that  her  captor  was  not  Frank  Kelly,  but  an  Italian 
whose  real  name  was  Alphonse  Citro.  For  a  year  she  was  kept 
as  a  slave  in  this  resort,  which  was  over  a  saloon,  and  the  en- 
trance was  through  a  back  alley.  The  only  visitors  were 
Italians,  who  came  for  immoral  purposes.  Learning  last 
summer  that  Margaret 's  father,  who  had  been  hunting  relent- 
lessly for  his  daughter,  was  on  the  track  of  her,  the  girl  was 
taken  by  Alphonse  Citro,  alias  Kelly,  to  Gary,  Indiana.    When 


124  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

the  father  came  to  the  resort  with  a  policeman  he  found  that 
his  daughter  had  gone.  She  was  kept  in  Gary  about  two 
months,  and  then  returned  to  this  disreputable  place,  from 
which  she  escaped  finally,  the  Monday  before  last  Christmas.  A 
young  barber  took  pity  on  her  after  hearing  her  sad  story 
and  enlisted  the  sympathy  of  his  parents,  who  took  her  to 
their  home.  Alphonse  Citro  (Kelly)  looked  for  her  for  al- 
most a  week,  and  at  last  saw  her  going  from  a  store  to  this 
home,  where  she  was  staying.  He  went  to  the  house  and  de- 
manded at  the  point  of  a  revolver  that  she  be  given  up,  as  he 
said: 

' '  I  am  losing  money  every  day  she  is  gone. ' ' 
There  was  a  quarrel  over  the  girl,  during  which  some  people 
from  the  outside  were  attracted  to  the  house  by  the  commo- 
tion. Citro,  becoming  frightened,  fled  down  the  street,  and 
as  he  ran  threw  the  revolver,  with  which  he  tried  to  shoot  the 
father  of  the  barber  during  the  quarrel,  over  a  fence  into 
a  coal  yard.  After  running  two  blocks,  he  was  caught  and 
arrested.  Upon  these  facts  this  procurer,  Citro,  alias  Kelly, 
was  prosecuted  and  found  guilty  under  the  new  pandering 
law  in  Illinois,  and  received  a  sentence  of  one  year 's  imprison- 
ment and  a  fine  of  five  thousand  dollars.  The  poor  old  father 
and  mother,  distressed  and  heart-broken,  were  in  court  dur- 
ing the  trial  with  their  arms  around  each  other,  sobbing  with 
joy  because  their  little  girl  had  been  found.  Pizza,  the  owner 
of  the  place,  was  indicted  by  the  state  grand  jury,  but  escaped 
to  Italy.  This  case  is  only  one  of  the  hundreds  which  might 
be  told  to  show  how  the  girls  leave  home  upon  the  promise  of 
securing  employment  and  are  in  this  way  procured  for  places 
of  ill-repute. 

The  methods  employed  to  entice  young  women  are  quite 
similar,  but  as  to  the  particulars  each  case  varies  to  some 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Eoe.  125 

extent.  After  the  girls  are  once  within  the  resort,  the  stories 
are  about  the  same.  Their  street  clothes  are  seized  and  parlor 
dresses  varying  in  length  are  put  upon  them.  They  are 
threatened,  never  allowed  to  write  letters,  never  permitted 
the  use  of  the  telephone,  never  trusted  outside  the  house 
without  the  escort  of  a  procurer,  until  two  or  three  months 
have  elapsed,  when  they  are  considered  hardened  to  the  life 
and  too  ashamed  to  face  parents  and  friends  again.  If  they 
should  ask  some  visitor  to  the  house  to  help  them,  would  he 
care  to  expose  his  name  to  the  police,  as  he  would  have  to, 
by  reporting  the  matter  ?  "Would  he  want  his  friends,  or  the 
folks  at  home  to  know  that  he  had  visited  such  a  place  ?  No ; 
he  would  let  the  girl  get  out  the  best  way  she  could;  even 
though  he  might  promise  to  help  her.  Girls  are  told  of  or 
perhaps  have  witnessed  others  who  tried  to  escape,  have  seen 
their  failure  and  punishment,  and  are  thereby  cowed  into 
submission.  They  are  always  held  upon  the  pretense  of  being 
indebted  to  the  house,  and  this  indebtedness  has  long  been 
the  backbone  of  the  white  slave  system.  From  the  time  the 
girl  is  first  sold  into  the  house  she  is  constantly  in  debt.  First, 
for  the  money  the  owner  gave  to  the  procurer  for  her,  next, 
for  her  parlor  clothes,  then  for  the  money  her  procurer  bor- 
rows from  the  owner  on  her  as  his  property,  goods  and  chattel. 
The  bonds  of  slavery  are  thus  fastened  upon  these  poor  mor- 
tals by  a  system  of  debt  and  vice  that  the  people  of  this  great 
country  little  realized  existed  until  lately. 

Fighting  against  this  slave  trade  under  the  archaic  Illinois 
laws  was  quite  disheartening  because  it  was  almost  impos- 
sible to  get  more  than  a  fine  upon  the  charge  of  disorderly 
conduct.  The  laws  were  so  full  of  loop-holes  that  the  traders 
laughed  at  the  idea  of  being  prosecuted.  However,  in  Illi- 
nois, at  least,  we  have  choked  the  laugh.     The  features  once 


126  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

wreathed  in  smiles  begin  to  show  the  lines  of  worry  and  fear, 
for  a  new  law  called  the  Pandering  Act  has  been  passed. 
This  went  into  force  July  1st,  1908.  The  new  law  is  good, 
but  experience  has  shown  where  improvement  is  necessary. 
Without  exception,  in  cases  I  have  tried,  certain  wholesome- 
minded  jurors  have  said  after  concluding  the  case,  that  the 
penalty  was  too  light  for  the  first  offender.  It  should  be 
made  more  severe.  Therefore  an  effort  is  now  being  made 
to  make  the  first  offense  punishable  by  imprisonment  in  the 
penitentiary  from  one  to  ten  years.  Then,  also,  there  should 
be  a  new  law  covering  the  bringing  a  female  person  of  any 
age  into  the  state  or  taking  her  out  of  the  state  for  immoral 
purposes.  The  age  limit  should  be  omitted  from  the  present 
Illinois  law,  which  does  not  punish  those  bringing  girls  over 
the  age  of  eighteen  into  the  state.  While  other  states  are 
sending  for  copies  of  the  Illinois  pandering  and  other  white 
slave  laws,  the  state  legislation  will  soon  be  uniform  upon 
this  subject.  The  United  States  government  should  be  alive 
to  the  situation  also.  At  present  it  has  only  the  immigration 
laws  regulating  the  importation  of  immoral  women  to  fall 
back  upon.  A  Federal  law  under  the  inter-state  and  foreign 
commerce  act  should  be  passed  at  once.  The  Federal  Govern- 
ment has  better  and  more  effective  machinery  for  getting  at 
the  facts  in  the  foreign  and  inter-state  traffic  in  girls  than 
have  the  various  states.  Commerce  consists  in  intercourse 
and  traffic,  including  in  these  terms  the  transportation  and 
transit  of  persons  and  property,  as  well  as  the  purchase,  sale 
and  barter  of  persons  and  property  and  agreements  therefor. 
A  Federal  law  might  be  enacted  as  follows: 

"  Be  it  enacted  by  the  Senate  and  House  of  Representatives 
of  the  United  States  of  America  in  Congress  assembled,  that 
whoever  shall  procure,  entice  or  encourage  any  female  per- 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Roe.  127 

sons  to  leave  one  of  the  states  of  the  United  States  of  America 
to  go  into  any  other  state  in  the  United  States  of  America 
for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  to  become  an  inmate  of  a 
house  of  prostitution  or  to  enter  any  place  where  prostitution 
is  practiced  or  allowed,  or  shall  attempt  to  procure  or  entice 
any  female  person  to  leave  one  of  the  states  of  the  United 
States  of  America  to  go  into  any  other  state  for  the  purpose 
of  prostitution,  or  to  become  an  inmate  of  a  house  of  prosti- 
tution or  to  enter  any  place  where  prostitution  is  practiced  or 
allowed,  or  shall  receive  or  give,  or  agree  to  receive  or  give 
any  money  or  thing  of  value  for  procuring  or  attempting  to 
procure  any  female  person  to  leave  one  of  the  states  of  the 
United  States  of  America  to  go  into  any  other  state  in  the 
United  States  of  America  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or 
to  become  an  inmate  of  a  house  of  prostitution  or  to  enter 
any  place  where  prostitution  is  practiced  or  allowed,  shall, 
in  every  case,  be  deemed  guilty  of  a  felony,  and  on  conviction 
thereof  be  imprisoned  not  more  than  ten  years  and  pay  a  fine 
of  not  more  than  ten  thousand  dollars." 

Under  the  recent  Federal  decisions  what  can  prevent  the 
enactment  and  enforcement  of  such  a  law  making  the  traffic 
in  women  illegal  ?  Of  course,  offenses  committed  solely  within 
the  state  could  not  be  reached  by  the  Federal  Government. 

Other  needed  legislative  regulations  concerning  the  white 
slave  traffic,  such  as  laws  against  the  procuring  system  and 
the  indebtedness  system,  have  been  set  forth  in  other  articles 
in  this  magazine.  However,  besides  these  laws  it  will  be  nec- 
essary in  each  state  to  create  a  commission  in  the  various  cities, 
other  than  the  police  department,  which  shall  keep  a  complete 
record  of  all  houses  of  ill-fame  and  their  inmates.  A  public 
bureau  of  information  should  be  established  by  law  where 
parents  and  friends  could  easily  learn  the  whereabouts  of 


128  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

girls  who  have  not  been  heard  from,  and  this  bureau  should 
have  the  names  of  every  inmate  of  a  disreputable  house. 
Such  a  commission  should  have  power  to  inquire  carefully 
into  the  life  of  every  girl.  Statements  should  be  made  under 
oath,  and  the  right  to  ascertain  whether  or  not  these  state- 
ments were  true  should  be  given  the  commission.  Thereby 
the  infected  spots  in  every  part  of  the  country  could  be  cov- 
ered, and  every  girl  and  woman  in  immoral  places  could  be 
accounted  for.  The  fact  that  this  has  not  been  done  hereto- 
fore has  greatly  aided  the  slave  traders  because  their  success 
is  accomplished  by  secrecy.  Let  us  drag  the  monster,  white 
slavery,  from  under  ground  and  let  the  light  of  day  show  upon 
it,  and  then  we  shall  have  gone  a  long  way  towards  extermina- 
tion of  this  traffic. 

That  secrecy  is  maintained  as  to  who  the  girls  are  and  where 
they  are  from  is  evidenced  by  one  of  the  many  letters  I  have 
received,  of  which  the  following  is  a  copy. 

Chicago,  III.,  July  13,  1908. 
Mr.  Clifford  G.  Roe, 

Deai'  Sir:   Did  you  receive  a  letter  from  my  mother,  Mrs. 

Effie ,  from  Eloise,  Mich.    If  so,  I  wish  you  would  come 

and  see  me  so  I  can  tell  you  everything.  I  have  not  been  out 
of  the  house  for  three  months.  I  have  not  got  any  clothes 
to  wear  on  the  street  because  I  owe  a  debt.  I  wish  you  could 
come  and  see  me  and  I  can  tell  you  everything  then.  I  am  a 
White  Slave  for  sure.  Please  excuse  pencil.  I  had  to  write 
this  and  sneak  this  out.  Please  see  to  this  at  once  and  help 
me  and  oblige, 

Viola . 

2001  Armour  Avenue. 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Roe.  129 

With  people  passing  back  and  forth  on  the  street  and  in 
and  out  of  the  house  every  day  it  seems  astonishing  that  girls 
can  be  kept  as  slaves.  However,  the  above  appeal  for  help 
tells  the  story,  not  alone  of  the  writer,  but  of  the  thousands 
of  girls  whose  lives  are  being  crushed,  the  minds  depraved, 
and  the  bodies  diseased  by  outrageous  bondage.  It  was  dis- 
covered that  Viola  had  been  given  a  fictitious  name;  all  ave- 
nues of  communication  with  the  outside  world  were  cut  off, 
and  she  had  lived  in  constant  fear  of  being  beaten  if  she  let 
anyone  know  who  she  was.  At  last,  through  a  ruse,  she  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  letters  to  her  mother  and  myself,  which 
brought  about  her  rescue  and  the  return  of  the  girl  to  her 
mother,  who  is  an  invalid  in  the  Wayne  County  Hospital  at 
Eloise,  Michigan. 

The  owners  of  the  resort  where  she  was  held  were  brought 
before  the  bar  of  justice  and  the  judge  in  sentencing  them 
said:  "The  levee  resort  keepers  are  murdering  the  souls  of 
girls  and  women  by  binding  them  with  ropes  of  illegal  debt ; 
this  practice  must  be  wiped  out." 

The  next  question  which  confronts  us  is  what  shall  we  do 
with  the  girls  after  they  are  liberated  from  the  houses  ?  Some 
have  parents,  some  are  ashamed  to  go  back  home,  while  others 
are  diseased.  Certainly  it  seems  a  pity  to  turn  them  out  and 
let  them  battle  against  the  prejudice  of  a  "past  life."  Homes 
and  institutions  for  girls  are  often  filled  or  the  doors  are 
barred  against  fallen  women.  The  solution  of  the  problem 
is  a  home  for  white  slaves  in  every  large  city  in  the  country. 

Such  a  home  should  be  well  equipped  with  a  hospital  to 
cure  disease  contracted  in  disreputable  houses,  and  then  there 
should  be  schools  in  the  institute  for  training  the  girls  for 
useful  lives,  where  sewing,   cooking,  music,   art,  and  other 


130  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

things  are  taught.  In  this  way  the  girls  would  be  fitted  to 
earn  honest  and  wholesome  livelihoods  when  they  go  out  to 
face  the  world. 

Letters  are  sent  me  from  all  parts  of  the  continent  asking 
what  can  be  done  to  help  the  white  slaves.  My  answer  is, 
form  organizations  everywhere  to  fight  this  traffic.  Through 
these  organizations  educate  the  girls  in  the  rural  communi- 
ties to  be  careful  how  they  are  enticed  or  persuaded  to  go  to 
the  cities.  Demand  proper  legislation,  write  the  senators  and 
representatives  about  it,  in  all  places  see  that  the  laws  in  .re- 
gard to  disorderly  resorts  are  enforced,  that  the  foregoing 
proposed  commission  is  established  and  help  build  homes  for 
training  the  girls  for  better  lives. 

What  mockery  it  is  to  have  in  our  harbor  in  New  York 
the  statue  of  Liberty  with  outstretched  arms  welcoming  the 
foreign  girl  to  the  land  of  the  free !  How  she  must  sneer  at 
it  and  rebuke  the  country  with  such  an  emblematic  monument 
at  its  very  gate  when  she  finds  here  a  slavery  whose  chains 
bind  the  captive  more  securely  than  those  in  the  country  from 
which  she  has  come ! 

"What  a  travesty  to  wrap  the  flag  of  America  around  our 
girls  and  extol  virtue  and  purity,  freedom  and  liberty,  and 
then  not  raise  a  hand  to  protect  our  own  girls  who  are  being 
procured  by  white  slave  traders  every  day! 

Some  ministers  have  said  that  the  subject  is  too  black  to 
present  to  their  congregations.  It  is  a  problem,  they  said, 
for  the  public  authorities  and  slum  workers,  not  a  question 
for  the  high-minded  citizen.  It  is  the  hope  that  the  readers 
of  this  magazine,  who  are  church  members,  will  suggest  that 
their  pastors  aid  in  the  struggle  against  white  slavery,  and 
that  through  them,  people  everywhere  may  be  awakened  to  a 


The  Story  of  Clifford  G.  Eoe.  131 

realization  of  its  importance.  No  social  problem  is  too  un- 
clean for  the  people  to  take  hold  of  when  the  cause  undermines 
the  fairest  heritage  in  life,  our  homes.  For,  after  all,  the 
home  is  the  social  unit  and  the  very  foundation  of  all  govern- 
ment. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


More  About  the  Traffic  in  Shame. 


By  Mrs.  Ophelia  Amigh,  Superintendent  of  the  Illinois 
Training  School  for  Girls. 

One  of  the  most  disheartening  things  in  the  work  of  pro- 
tecting innocent  girls  and  restoring  to  useful  lives  those  who 
have  been  betrayed  from  the  path  of  right  living  is  the  blind 
incredulity  of  a  very  large  part  of  the  public.  There  are 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  women  in  the  homes  of  this  country 
who  know  as  little  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  world,  so  far 
as  the  safety  of  their  daughters  is  concerned,  as  so  many 
children.  They  are  almost  marvelously  ignorant  of  the  ter- 
rible conditions  all  about  them — and  all  about  their  children, 
too. 

Of  course,  their  blindness  to  these  awful  actualities  makes 
them  more  comfortable,  for  the  time  being,  than  they  could 
possibly  be  if  awake  to  the  perils  which  beset  the  feet  of 
their  daughters  and  the  daughters  of  their  friends  and  neigh- 
bors. But  there  is  no  permanency  to  this  sort  of  peace — 
and  thousands  of  mothers  of  this  class  are  annually  brought 
to  their  senses  and  recalled  to  earth  by  discovering  that  their 
own  daughters  have  made  the  fatal  misstep  and  have  passed 
under  the  brand  of  the  pariah.  The  awakening  of  such 
parents  comes  too  late,  generally,  to  do  much  good.  Not  al- 
ways, but  in  a  majority  of  cases.  Many,  many  times  after 
I  have  related  to  a  casual  woman  visitor  the  simple  details 
of  a  typical  "case"  brought  here  to  the  State  Home,  the  caller 

132 


More  About  the  Traffic  in  Shame.  133 

has  exclaimed:  "How  terrible!  I  didn't  dream  that  such 
things  were  going  on  in  the  world ! ' ' 

Now,  if  you  had  something  of  great  value  which  needed  to 
be  protected  day  and  night,  would  you  select  for  such  a  task 
a  blind  watchman?  or  one  who  was  firmly  possessed  of  the 
idea  that  there  was  really  no  danger,  no  occasion  for  watchful- 
ness ?  Certainly  not !  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  of  such 
priceless  value  to  a  father  or  a  mother  as  the  honor,  the  purity, 
the  good  character  of  a  daughter.  No  parent  will  possibly 
question  this  statement.  And  still  there  are  many  thousands 
of  parents  entrusted  by  Providence  with  the  safe-keeping 
of  this  priceless  treasure  who  are  themselves  in  the  position 
of  discharging  that  great  responsibility  with  closed  eyes,  with 
dull  ears  and  with  a  childish  belief  that  there  is  no  real  peril 
threatening  the  safety  of  their  daughters!  These  parents 
do  not  live  on  earth,  their  heads  are  in  the  clouds  and  their 
ears  are  filled  with  the  cry  of  "  'Peace!  Peace!'  when  there 
is  no  peace." 

As  one  whose  daily  duty  it  is  to  deal  with  wayward  and 
fallen  girls,  as  one  who  has  to  dig  down  into  the  sordid  and 
revolting  details  of  thousands  of  these  said  cases  (for  I  have 
spent  the  best  part  of  my  life  in  this  line  of  work)  let  me 
say  to  such  mothers : 

In  this  day  and  age  of  the  world  no  young  girl  is  safe! 
And  all  young  girls  who  are  not  surrounded  by  the  alert, 
constant  and  intelligent  protection  of  those  who  love  them 
unselfishly  are  in  imminent  and  deadly  peril.  And  the  more 
beautiful  and  attractive  they  are  the  greater  is  their  peril! 

The  first  and  most  vital  step  for  the  protection  of  the  girls 
who  walk  in  this  path  of  pitfalls  is  to  arouse  the  sleeping 
watchman  who  are,  by  reason  of  their  parenthood,  responsible 
for  the  safekeeping  of  their   daughters.     This  is  why  the 


134  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

"White  Slave"  articles  by  Hon.  Edwin  W.  Sims  and  others, 
■which  have  been  published  in  the  "Woman's  World,"  have 
done  great  good.  They  have  stirred  to  a  sense  of  alarm  thou- 
sands of  parents  who  were  asleep  in  a  false  sense  of  security. 
If  they  accomplish  nothing  beyond  this  they  will  fully  have 
justified  their  publication. 

But  it  is  evident  that  they  will  also  result  in  the  enactment 
of  much  needed  legislation,  of  laws  which  will  make  it  easier 
to  convict  and  punish  those  who  live  from  this  foul  traffic  in 
the  shame  of  girls  whose  natural  protectors  are  asleep  in  this 
false  sense  of  security.  Of  course,  practically  every  state  has 
some  laws  against  that  traffic — but  I  do  not  know  of  any  state 
in  which  the  laws  now  on  the  statute  books  are  adequate  to 
deal  with  the  situation  as  it  should  be  dealt  with. 

One  of  the  things  which  comfortable  and  trusting  parents 
seem  to  find  especially  hard  to  believe  is  the  point  upon  which 
both  United  States  District  Attorney  Sims  and  his  assistant, 
Mr.  Parkin,  have  placed  so  much  stress — the  existence  of  an 
active  and  systematic  traffic  in  girls.  There  is  no  safety  for 
the  daughter  of  any  parents  who  are  not  awake  and  alive 
to  the  actuality  of  this  fact ! 

It  is  one  of  the  satisfactions  of  my  life  to  reflect  that  I 
have  been  one  of  the  agents  in  sending  a  dozen — perhaps 
more — persons  to  the  penitentiary  for  participating  in  this 
traffic. 

The  dragnets  of  the  inhuman  men  and  women  who  ply 
this  terrible  trade  are  spread  day  and  night  and  are  manipu- 
lated with  a  skill  and  precision  which  ought  to  strike  terror 
to  the  heart  of  every  careless  or  indifferent  parent.  The 
wonder  is  not  that  so  many  are  caught  in  this  net,  but  that 
they  escape !  I  count  the  week — I  might  almost  say  the  day — 
a  happy  and  fortunate  one  which  does  not  bring  to  my  at- 


More  About  the  Traffic  in  Shame.  135 

tention  as  an  officer  of  the  state  a  deplorable  case  of  this  kind. 

Just  to  show  how  tightly  and  broadly  the  nets  of  these 
fishers  for  girls  are  spread,  let  me  tell  of  an  instance  which 
occurred  from  this  institution: 

This  girl,  whom  I  will  call  Nellie,  is  a  very  ordinary  looking 
girl  and  below  the  average  of  intelligence,  but  as  tractable  and 
obedient  as  she  is  ingenuous.  She  is  wholly  without  the 
charm  which  would  naturally  attract  the  eye  of  the  white 
slave  trader. 

Because  of  her  quietness,  her  obedience  and  her  good  dis- 
position, she  was,  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  institu- 
tion, permitted  to  go  into  the  family  of  a  substantial  farmer 
out  in  the  west  and  work  as  a  housemaid,  a  "hired  girl" — 
her  wages  to  be  deposited  to  her  credit  against  the  time  when 
she  should  reach  the  age  of  twenty-one  and  leave  the  Home. 

She  had  been  in  her  position  for  some  time  and  was  so  quiet 
and  satisfactory  that  one  Sunday  when  the  family  were  not 
going  to  church  the  mistress  said : 

"Nellie,  if  you  wish  to  go  to  church  alone  you  may  do  so. 
The  milk  wagon  will  be  along  shortly  and  you  can  ride  on 
that  to  the  village — and  here  is  seventy-five  cents.  You 
may  want  to  buy  your  dinner  and  perhaps  some  candy. ' ' 

"When  Nellie  reached  town  and  was  on  her  way  past  the 
railroad  station  to  the  church,  the  train  for  Chicago  came  in, 
and  the  impulse  seized  her  to  get  aboard,  go  to  the  city  and 
look  up  her  father,  whom  she  had  not  seen  for  several  months. 
She  went  to  the  city  and  had  hardly  stepped  from  the  train 
into  the  big  station  when  she  heard  a  man's  voice  saying: 
"Why,  heUo,  Mary!" 

Instantly — foolishly,  of  course — she  answered  him  and  re- 
plied : 

"My  name's  not  Mary,  it's  Nellie." 


136  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

"You  look  the  very  picture,"  he  responded,  "of  a  girl  I 
know  well  whose  name  is  Mary — and  she's  a  fine  girl,  too! 
Are  any  of  your  folks  here  to  meet  you  ? ' ' 

"No,"  she  answered.  "My  father's  here  in  the  city,  some- 
where, but  he  doesn't  know  I'm  coming.  I've  been  working 
out  in  the  country  for  a  long  time  and  I  didn't  write  him 
about  coming  back." 

Her  answers  were  so  ingenuous  and  revealing  that  the 
man  saw  that  he  had  an  easy  and  simple  victim  to  deal  with. 
Therefore  his  tactics  were  very  direct. 

"It's  about  time  to  eat,"  he  suggested,  "and  I  guess  we're 
both  hungry.  You  go  to  a  restaurant  and  eat  with  me  and 
perhaps  I  can  help  you  to  find  your  father  quicker  than  you 
could  do  it  alone." 

She  accepted,  and  in  the  course  of  the  meal  he  asked  her 
if  she  would  not  like  to  find  a  place  at  which  to  work.  "I 
know  of  a  fine  place  in  Blank  City, ' '  he  added.  ' '  The  woman 
is  looking  for  a  good  girl  just  like  you." 

"Yes,  I'd  be  pleased  to  get  the  place,  but  I  haven't  any 
money  to  pay  the  fare  with,"  was  her  answer. 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  he  quickly  replied.  "I'll  buy  your 
ticket  and  give  you  a  little  money  besides  for  a  cab  and  other 
expenses.  The  woman  told  me  to  do  that  if  I  could  find  her 
a  girl.    She'll  send  me  back  a  check  for  it  all." 

After  he  had  bought  the  ticket  and  put  her  aboard  the 
train  going  to  Blank  City,  he  wrote  the  name  of  the  woman 
to  whom  he  was  sending  her,  gave  her  about  $2  extra  and  then 
delivered  this  fatherly  advice  to  her: 

"You're  just  a  young  girl  and  it's  best  for  you  not  to  talk 
to  anybody  on  the  train  or  after  you  get  off.  Don't  show 
this  paper  to  anybody  or  tell  anybody  where  you're  going. 
It  isn't  any  of  their  business,  anyway.    And  as  soon  as  you 


More  About  the  Traffic  in  Shame.  137 

yet  off  the  train  you'll  find  plenty  of  cabs  there.  Hand  your 
paper  to  the  first  cab  driver  in  the  line,  get  in  and  ride  to 
Mrs.  A 's  home.    Pay  the  driver  and  then  walk  in." 

Believing  that  she  was  being  furnished  a  position  by  a  re- 
markably kind  man,  the  poor  girl  followed  his  directions 
implicitly — and  landed  the  next  day  in  one  of  the  most  no- 
torious houses  of  shame  in  the  State  of  Illinois  outside  of 
Chicago.  How  she  was  found  and  rescued  is  a  story  quite 
apart  from  the  purpose  which  has  led  me  to  tell  of  this  in- 
cident— that  of  indicating  how  tightly  the  slave  traders 
have  their  nets  spread  for  even  the  most  ordinary  and  unat- 
tractive prey.  They  let  no  girl  escape  whom  they  dare  to 
approach ! 

It  may  be  well  and  to  the  point  to  add,  however,  that  two 
other  girls  who  had  been  in  the  care  of  the  State  Home  were 
found  to  be  in  the  same  house  to  which  the  girl  had  been 
lured,  and  they  were  also  recovered. 

Almost  at  the  beginning  of  my  experience  I  received  a 
penciled  note  which  I  have  kept  on  my  desk  as  a  stimulus  to 
my  energies  and  my  watchfulness  along  the  line  of  checkmat- 
ing the  work  of  the  white  slavers.  It  is  very  brief  and  terse 
— but  what  a  story  it  tells!  Here  is  a  copy  of  it — with  the 
substitution  of  a  fictitious  name : 

"Ellen  Holmes  has  been  sold  for 
$50.00  to  Madam  Blank's  house  at 
Armour  Avenue." 

The  statement  was  true — and  the  man  who  sold  her  and  the 
woman  who  bought  her  were  both  sent  to  the  state  penitent- 
tiary  as  a  penalty  for  the  transaction ! 

Another  fact  which  the  public  finds  hard  to  believe — espe- 
cially the  public  of  mothers — is  that  girls  who  are  lured  into 


138  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

the  life  of  shame  find  it  impossible  to  make  their  escape,  and 
that  they  are  prisoners  and  slaves  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 
I  recall  one  instance  of  a  girl  from  a  good  home  who  had 
fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  white  slave  trader  and  been  sold 
to  a  house  in  the  red-light  district.  Her  people  were  frantic 
over  her  disappearance  and  made  every  possible  effort  to 
locate  her,  but  without  success.  Several  months  after  the  ex- 
citement and  publicity  aroused  by  her  disappearance  died 
away,  a  newsboy  who  had  delivered  papers  at  her  home — ■ 
which  was  in  a  very  good  residence  district  of  the  city — hap- 
pened to  be  passing  along  a  cross  street  of  the  red-light  section 
— just  On  the  fringe  of  it,  in  fact.  Suddenly  he  heard  a  tap 
on  the  window,  looked  up  and  saw  the  anxious  face  of  the 
lost  girl.    Then  she  disappeared. 

Knowing  the  story  of  her  strange  disappearance,  he  hurried 
straight  to  her  home  and  told  of  his  experience.  Instantly 
the  father  secured  officers  and  the  little  newsboy  led  the 
posse  back  to  the  house,  in  the  window  of  which  he  had  caught 
a  glimpse  of  her  face.  They  raided  the  place  and  rescued 
the  girl.  The  story  of  the  terrible  treatment  which  she  had 
received  cannot  be  told  here.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  she  had 
been  held  as  a  captive,  imprisoned  as  much  as  any  inmate 
of  a  penitentiary  is  imprisoned,  and  that  if  the  friendly  news- 
boy had  not  happened  to  pass  as  he  did,  the  window  from 
which  she  was  looking  out,  she  would  undoubtedly  be  there 
to-day  or  in  some  other  similar  prison  of  shame  through  the 
process  of  exchange. 

One  other  matter  in  this  connection  needs  to  come  in  for 
clear  and  decisive  emphasis;  the  fact  that  the  runaway  mar- 
riage is  the  favorite  device  of  the  white  slaver  for  landing 
victims  who  could  not  otherwise  be  entrapped.  These  alleged 
summer  resorts  and  excursion   centers  which   are  well  ad- 


More  About  the  Traffic  in  Shame.  139 

vertised  as  Gretna  Greens,  and  as  places  where  the  usual  legal 
and  official  formalities  preliminary  to  respectable  marriage 
are  reduced  to  a  minimum,  are  star  recruiting  stations  for  the 
white  slave  traffic.  I  have  never  seen  this  point  brought  out 
with  any  degree  of  clearness  in  any  article,  and  I  earnestly 
urge  all  mothers  to  give  this  statement  the  most  serious  con- 
sideration, and  never  to  allow  a  daughter  to  go  to  one  of  these 
places  on  an  excursion  or  under  any  pretext  whatever,  unless 
accompanied  by  some  older  member  of  the  family.  And  even 
then  there  is  something  unwholesome  and  contaminating  in 
the  very  atmosphere  of  such  a  place. 

Do  you  think  that  I  overstate  the  perils  of  places  of  this 
kind  ?  Of  these  gay  excursion  centers,  these  American  Gretna 
Greens?  I  hesitate  to  say  how  many  girls  I  have  had  under 
my  care  who  were  enticed  into  a  "runaway  marriage"  at 
these  places — and  then  promptly  sold  into  white  slavery  by 
the  men  whom  they  had  married,  the  men  who  married 
them  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  sell  them  to  the  houses  of 
the  red-light  district  and  live  in  luxury  from  the  proceeds 
of  their  shame. 

Let  every  mother  teach  her  daughter  that  the  men  who 
proposes  an  elopement,  a  runaway  marriage,  is  not  to  be  trust- 
ed for  an  instant,  and  puts  himself  under  suspician  of  being 
that  most  loathsome  of  all  things  in  human  form — a  white 
slave  trader! 


For  the  Protection  op  Girls. 

From  8,000  to  10,000  male  parasites  live  on  money  taken 
in  by  the  25,000  or  30,000  women  of  evil  lives  in  Chicago, 
according  to  an  estimate  by  Clifford  G.  Roe,  Assistant  State's 
Attorney.     If  this  parasitism  could  be  stopped  these  men 


140  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

would  lose  one  motive  for  luring  inexperienced  girls  into  the 
white  slave  market. 

A  method  of  putting  an  end  to  this  evil  is  outlined  in  a 
bill  pending  in  the  state  legislature.  It  provides  that  any 
person  who  lures  a  girl  into  slavery  and  receives  money,  sup- 
port or  maintenance  from  her  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a 
felony  and  on  conviction  shall  be  sent  to  the  penitentiary  for 
one  or  more  years. 

A  companion  bill  makes  it  a  felony,  punishable  by  impris- 
onment for  one  year  or  more,  up  to  ten  years,  to  detain  a 
girl  in  an  evil  resort  or  pay  or  cancel  any  debt  or  obligation. 
The  passage  of  this  bill  would  assist  materially  in  the  rescue 
of  some  of  the  4,000  or  5,000  recruits,  three-fourths  of  them 
country  girls  from  the  middle  west,  estimated  to  be  drawn  an- 
nually into  disorderly  houses  in  this  city. 


CHAPTER  X. 


Added  Proof  op  the  Crime. 

In  this  chapter  we  give  the  story  as  told  by  a  Chicago  news- 
paper, The  Tribune: 

1 '  One  year  ago  Chicago  stood  before  the  world  accused  and 
shamed  as  the  greatest  white  slave  mart  in  America.  To-day 
the  situation  is  changed.  Chicago  now  stands  forth  as  the 
scene  of  the  greatest  battle  in  the  world  between  the  forces 
for  good  and  the  white  slavers,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  ever  in 
the  history  of  civilization  was  waged  such  a  fight  as  is  being 
fought  in  Chicago  to-day  for  the  preservation  of  the  city's 
good  name  and  against  the  unspeakable  traffic  in  girls  known 
as  white  slavery. 

The  city  is  roused.  Its  sensibilities  at  last  have  been 
touched.  For  the  first  time  since  the  beginning  of  anti-vice 
crusades  the  decent  forces  of  the  community,  from  govern- 
ment officials  to  private  citizens,  from  specific  reform  associa- 
tions to  church  bodies,  have  risen  in  response  to  the  signal  of 
alarm  sounded  by  the  leaders.  The  total  reform  force  of  the 
community  has  been  set  in  motion.  Chicago  has  awakened. 
The  knell  has  been  sounded,  and  the  infamous  white  slaver, 
canker  sore  on  the  face  of  modern  civilization,  is  to  be  hunted, 
and  fought,  and  prosecuted  to  his  death. 

"Not  alone  for  the  sake  of  the  white  slaves  themselves,  but 
for  the  sake  of  civilization,"  is  the  motto  of  the  new  cru- 
saders, and  this  is  the  motto  that  has  been  adopted  by  the 
varied  but  consolidated  army  that  will  fight  shoulder  to 
shoulder  until  white  slaving  in  Chicago  is  a  thing  of  the  past. 

141 


142  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Real  Representatives  Compose  "Akmy." 

The  forces  that  make  up  the  army  are  as  representative  of 
Chicago  as  a  metropolis,  as  an  Illinois  city,  and  as  a  big  part 
of  the  United  States  as,  perhaps,  could  be  gathered  together. 
Here  is  a  list  of  them  up  to  date: 

B'nai  B'rith  society,  Adolph  Kraus,  president;  Clifford  G. 
Roe,  attorney. 

Chicago  Association  of  Commerce. 

United  States  District  Attorney  Edward  W.  Sims. 

State's  Attorney  John  E.  W.  Wayman. 

Illinois  State  Bureau  of  Labor. 

All  Chicago  churches. 

Commercial  club. 

All  reform  bodies. 

Hundreds  of  private  citizens  who  have  volunteered  to  act  as 
detectives  in  running  down  white  slavers. 

These  are  the  forces  for  good.  Arrayed  against  them  in 
sullen  battle,  foully  fighting  for  continuance  of  the  terrible 
conditions  that  make  their  existence  possible,  are  the  white 
slavers — the  "owners"  and  sellers  of  the  unfortunate  enslaved 
girls,  the  keepers  of  unnamable  resorts,  proprietors  of  tough 
saloons,  the  boss  politicians  to  whom  these  people  and  places 
are  a  power  in  time  of  election  and  a  source  of  rich  graft 
the  year  round,  and  lastly  the  unspeakable  male  vermin  who 
hang  around  the  fringes  of  the  red  lights  and  live  on  the 
pitiful  pittances  that  fall  from  the  tables  of  unfortunate 
women.  It  is  a  fight  between  the  decent  element  and  the  foul 
beings  who  squirm  and  toss  in  the  slime  of  the  underworld. 
It  is  a  fight  between  the  good  and  the  unspeakably  bad.  And 
for  once  the  good  starts  out  with  the  determination  to  stay  in 
the  fight  till  the  evil  is  wiped  from  the  face  of  the  earth. 


Added  Proof  of  the  Crime.  143 

Slaves  Bought  and  Sold  in  Chicago. 

1 '  It  means  simply  this, ' '  said  Attorney  Clifford  Roe,  ' '  Chi- 
cago at  last  has  waked  up  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that 
actual  slavery  that  deals  in  human  flesh  and  blood  as  a  market- 
able commodity  exists  in  terrible  magnitude  in  the  city  to- 
day. It  is  slavery,  real  slavery,  that  we  are  fighting.  The 
term  'white  slave'  isn't  a  misnomer  or  a  sensational  term  con- 
jured up  by  sensational  newspapers.  The  words  describe 
what  they  stand  for.  The  white  slave  of  Chicago  is  a  slave 
as  much  as  the  negro  was  before  the  Civil  War,  as  the  African 
is  in  the  Belgian  districts  of  the  Congo ;  as  much  as  any  people 
are  slaves  who  are  owned,  flesh  and  bone,  body  and  soul, 
by  another  person,  and  who  can  be  sold  at  any  time  and  place 
and  for  any  price  at  that  person's  will.  That  is  what  slavery 
is,  and  that  is  the  condition  of  hundreds,  yes,  of  thousands, 
of  girls  in  Chicago  at  present. 

"It  seems  preposterous  to  think  of  girls,  young,  innocent 
girls,  girls  of  any  kind,  to  be  bought  and  sold  like  cattle  in 
the  city,  but  it  is  too  late  to  regard  the  matter  in  a  skeptical 
light.  The  thing  exists.  The  trade  in  girls  in  Chicago  is  as 
firmly  established  in  its  own  dark,  underground  way  as  the 
trade  in  beeves  out  at  the,  stockyards.  One  thousand  women 
annually  needed  to  supply  the  demands  of  the  city.  A  part  of 
these  come  through  the  natural  channels  of  the  misfortunes 
that  have  produced  their  kind  since  the  world  began  ;but  a 
great  part  are  put  into  life  through  the  terrible  slavery. 

"A  syndicate  for  the  procuring,  enslaving  and  sale  of 
young  girls  exists  in  the  city.  Tt  has  scores  of  slaves  in  its 
toils,  as  helpless  as  the  slaves  in  Africa.  There  are  scores  of 
'independent'  slavers,  unspeakable  beings  who  own  outright 
a  woman  and  live  on  her  earnings.    They  sell  her  when,  where 


144  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

and  how  they  please.     They  own  her.     Can  anything  more 
horrible  be  imagined  ? 

Crusade  Planned  for  Big  Fight. 

"These  are  the  conditions  that  the  present  crusade  is  organ- 
ized to  fight.  It  will  not  be  a  spasmodic  crusade.  It  has  been 
planned  for  a  long  time,  and  organized  along  the  lines  that 
experience  has  taught  us  will  bring  the  results  desired. 
These  results  are  nothing  more  nor  less  than  to  put  every 
white  slaver  in  prison  to  rescue  the  hundreds  of  poor  girls 
whose  slavery  is  a  disgrace  to  the  community  and  to  civiliza- 
tion, and  to  make  it  impossible  for  pandering  and  white  slav- 
ing to  exist  here.  In  short,  to  wipe  white  slavery  off  the  face 
of  the  earth,  so  far  as  Chicago  is  concerned  at  least. 

"It  will  be  a  long  fight  and  a  hard  one.  By  virtue  of 
the  power  over  his  subjects,  and  his  inhuman  treatment  of 
them,  the  white  slaver  is  a  hard  man  to  find  and  harder  to 
convict.  His  victim  often  is  so  ignorant  as  not  to  be  aware 
that  her  slavery  is  illegal.  Sometimes  she  is  loath  to  have 
the  life  she  is  leading  exposed.  And  always  she  fears  the 
brute  who  brought  her  to  her  awful  condition.  But  now  that 
the  city  has  been  awakened  the  task  is  easier.  An  adequate 
pandering  law  gives  us  a  weapon.  "We  will  have  the  aid  of 
hundreds  of  good  citizens  who  will  furnish  evidence,  besides 
our  own  corps  of  secret  service  men  who  will  work  from  our 
office,  and  the  courts  will  assist  us  to  the  limit  of  their  ability. 
The  doom  of  the  white  slaver  in  Chicago  has  been  sounded, 
and  with  his  going  Chicago  will  have  rid  itself  of  a  foul  sore 
that  has  shamed  its  reputation  as  a  civilized  community." 


Added  Proof  of  the  Crime.  145 

"Average  Citizen"  Blind  to  Conditions. 

The  magnitude  of  this  evil,  and  the  realization  that  the 
term  "white  slavery"  actually  means  flesh  and  blood  slavery 
of  womankind,  comes  as  a  shock  to  the  average  citizen.  Slav- 
ery is  considered  an  attribute  to  the  dark  ages.  Modern  en- 
lightenment has  no  room  for  it  in  its  economy.  This  country 
could  not  bear  the  spectacle  of  black  folk  enslaved  in  the 
South,  and  the  most  terrible  civil  war  in  all  history  was  the 
result.  And  yet  here  in  Chicago  the  good  citizen,  his  wife, 
and  his  sons  and  daughters  ride  down  town  on  the  street  cars 
with  never  a  thought  of  the  fact  that  ere  he  reaches  down 
town  his  way  will  take  him  within  pistol  shot  of  dens  where 
women,  white  of  skin  and  civilized  of  mind,  are  kept  in  slav- 
ery under  conditions  much  worse  than  that  of  the  slave  quar- 
ters before  the  war. 

Not  nice,  is  it  ?  Apt  to  make  one  sniff  and  turn  to  subjects 
more  pleasing?  Quite  true.  But  it  is  this  disposition  of  the 
public  to  turn  from  the  subject  with  disgust,  to  refuse  to  dirty 
its  well-kept  fingers  with  so  foul  a  problem,  even  though  it 
flourish  in  our  back  yards,  that  has  made  it  possible  for  the 
horrible  traffic  in  woman-flesh  to  exist  and  to  grow  and 
flourish. 

"This  office,"  said  United  States  District  Attorney  Ed- 
ward Sims,  "has  always  known  that  white  slavery  existed. 
It  is  slavery.  It  is  a  plain  case  of  women  being  bought  and 
sold  and  held  in  captivity  and  slavery.  For  a  long  time,  how- 
ever, so  little  has  been  said  of  the  problem  that  it  has  been 
impossible  to  bring  the  public  to  realize  the  proportions  of 
this  terrible  disgrace.  "What  we  have  said  about  white  slavery 
has  been  disbelieved  or  discountenanced  on  many  grounds. 
But  even  if  the  innocence  of  a  white  slave  herself  is  not  estab- 


146  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

lished  the  law  holds  guilty  the  person  who  holds  her  in  cap- 
tivity. 

Regime  Intolerable  to  Civilization. 

"Even  admitting  that  a  woman  goes  into  this  life  of  her 
own  will,  the  time  comes  when  she  wishes  to  leave  it, 
or  wishes  to  go  to  another  resort.  But,  under  the  white  slave 
regime  she  is  held  in  one  place,  held  by  force,  beaten  and 
threatened  with  death  if  she  continues  in  her  rebellion.  She 
is  told  that  she  is  in  debt  to  the  house.  If  she  insists  in  her 
rebellion  she  may  be  sold  bodily  to  another  resort.  The  un- 
fortunate victims  of  white  slavery  in  Chicago  are  passing  from 
one  owner  to  another  for  cash  considerations,  exactly  as  were 
the  black  slaves  of  the  South.  She  is  a  human  chattel.  It  is 
a  condition  too  foul  for  words." 

Can  it  be  true?  asks  the  citizen  who  is  wont  to  regard  all 
of  Chicago  as  pretty  much  civilized. 

It  can.  Give  heed  to  the  story  of  one  Caterina  Bressi,  19- 
year-old  Italian  girl,  who  came  to  visit  Chicago  as  the  guest 
of  a  Mrs.  Santina  Pezza,  a  countrywoman  of  the  girl's  resid- 
ing in  lower  State  street.  Mrs.  Pezza  advanced  the  girl  $100 
to  pay  for  her  transportation  to  this  city,  and  in  New  York 
she  was  met  at  the  dock  by  two  men  who  informed  her  that 
they  had  been  sent  to  accompany  her  as  a  guarantee  of  her 
safe  arrival  at  her  destination.  Six  months  later  Attorney 
Sims  raided  a  house  at  461  State  Street  and  found  Miss 
Bressi  as  an  inmate,  suffering  from  long  razor  cuts  on  her 
face  and  neck.  The  story  that  the  girl  told  in  Mr.  Sims' 
office  subsequently  almost  passes  belief. 


Added  Proof  of  the  Crime.  147 

Girl  Held  in  Absolute  Slavery. 

Her  slavery  began  in  New  York,  where  the  men  placed  her 
in  a  house  of  bondage  and  kept  her  for  a  while.  In  a  few 
weeks  she  was  taken  to  Chicago  under  guard  and  placed  in 
a  cheap  resort  for  negroes  and  Italians  at  407  South  Clark 
Street.  Here  she  was  held  in  absolute  slavery  under  unprint- 
able conditions.  She  begged  for  her  release  and  was  informed 
that  she  was  in  debt  $400  to  Mrs.  Pezza.  The  girl  worked 
until  this  was  paid.  Then  she  was  told  bluntly  that  she  was 
a  slave,  that  she  would  be  held  as  such  until  the  end. 

Then  the  Bressi  girl  tried  to  run  away.  She  was  caught  at 
the  door  by  one  of  the  male  attaches  of  the  place,  knocked 
down  like  a  steer  in  the  pen,  and  while  she  lay  helpless  she 
was  slashed  about  the  head  with  a  razor,  one  cut  being  ten 
inches  long  and  destroying  one  of  her  eyelids.  After  thus 
having  convinced  her  that  it  was  dangerous  and  impossible 
to  escape  once  she  was  in  the  slaver's  clutches,  the  girl  was 
carried  upstairs,  her  wounds  were  roughly  sewed  up,  and 
after  that  she  was  sent  to  the  county  hospital  for  care,  being 
threatened  before  going  that  if  she  did  not  explain  to  the 
authorities  that  she  had  got  her  injuries  in  an  accident  she 
would  be  killed. 

The  girl  got  well.  She  was  turned  out  of  the  hospital  as 
recovered.  At  the  door  two  men  were  waiting  for  her. 
She  was  not  to  gain  her  freedom.  They  carried  her  back 
to  the  resort  on  State  Street,  from  the  hospital  to  a  place 
of  prostitution,  and  there  she  remained  until  Mr.  Sims'  raid- 
ers found  her.  But  for  the  raid  this  girl  still  would  be  a 
slave,  if  she  were  alive ;  and  there  are  hundreds  such  as  she, 
held  under  just  as  brutal  circumstances,  panting  for  the  air 
of  freedom,  in  the  different  vile  sections  of  the  city. 


148  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Ochsner  Case  Typical  op  Owner. 

Take  the  ease  of  the  infamous  Joseph  Ochsner,  a  typical 
case  of  an  "owner"  of  a  slave  who  was  exposed  and  caught. 
There  are  hundreds  of  Ochsners  in  the  city,  men  who  ' '  own ' ' 
a  woman,  who  place  her  where  they  please  and  live  off  her 
earnings. 

Joseph  Ochsner  was  a  German  who  had  learned  his  un- 
printable trade  in  the  old  country.  The  trade  was  ruining 
and  selling  girls.  In  appearance  he  was  the  stolid,  respectable 
German  citizen  of  the  middle  class ;  in  reality  he  was  a  fiend. 
In  time  the  Berlin  police  grew  suspicious  of  him  and  his  ac- 
tivities, and  it  was  hinted  to  him  that  he  had  better  leave 
the  country.  He  left,  but  before  going  he  managed  to  insinu- 
ate himself  into  the  affections  of  a  young  girl  of  good  family, 
and  in  the  end  he  persuaded  her  to  elope  with  him,  on  the 
promise  that  they  would  be  married  as  soon  as  they  reached 
America. 

They  came  to  South  Chicago.  Then  Ochsner,  with  a  bru- 
tality seldom  equaled  even  in  his  own  class,  at  once  took  the 
trusting  and  innocent  girl  to  one  of  the  lowest  resorts  in 
the  Strand  district,  removed  her  clothes,  locked  her  in  a 
room  and  calmly  informed  her  that  she  was  his  slave,  that 
she  must  stay  in  the  resort  until  he  saw  fit  to  remove  her, 
and  that  all  her  earnings  were  to  go  to  him. 

In  that  resort  the  girl  was  kept  in  absolute  slavery.  She 
was  not  allowed  to  leave  the  house,  to  write  or  receive  a  letter, 
or  to  have  any  communication  with  the  outer  world.  For 
months  she  remained  thus  enslaved.  Then  she  managed  to 
have  a  letter  mailed  to  her  parents  in  Germany,  the  authori- 
ties of  this  country  were  informed,  and  the  result  was  her 
release  and  the  arrest  and  conviction  of  the  infamous  Ochsner. 


Added  Proof  of  the  Crime.  149 

Root  op  the  Evil  the  Parasite. 

"Get  rid  of  the  parasite,  the  creature  who  places  young 
girls  in  resorts,"  says  Adolf  Kraus,  of  B'nai  B'rith.  "Place 
him  or  her  in  prison  and  the  root  of  the  white  slave  evil  will 
have  been  destroyed." 

But  do  these  parasites  prey  on  our  own  girls,  on  the  girls 
born  and  brought  up  in  Chicago  ?  asks  the  skeptical  citizen. 

They  do.  The  number  of  young  Chicago  girls  who  have 
been  trapped  and  doomed  to  a  living  death  is  appalling.  One 
case  may  suffice  to  illustrate  the  methods  of  a  parasite  "cut- 
ting out"  a  slave  for  himself  in  this  city.  The  case  still  is 
fresh  in  the  public  mind. 

Mary  McConnell,  age  16,  met  a  good  looking,  well  dressed 
young  man  named  Jacobson  at  a  west  side  amusement  park. 
The  young  man  conducted  himself  with  great  propriety,  paid 
for  rides  and  other  amusements,  and  at  the  end  of  the  evening 
begged  for  permission  to  call  on  the  girl  at  her  home.  Per- 
mission was  given,  and  when  Jacobson  came  he  brought  with 
him  a  friend,  Louis  Brodsky.  To  complete  the  party  Miss 
McConnell  called  in  a  girl  friend  of  her  own  age  and  intro- 
duced her  to  Brodsky.  A  few  nights  later  the  party  of  four 
went  out  for  an  evening's  amusement.  Then  the  young  men 
announced  that  they  were  desperately  in  love  with  the  girls, 
that  they  were  rich,  and  that  they  wanted  to  marry  them. 

Innocent  of  Pitfalls  of  City. 

The  girls,  young,  inexperienced,  and,  like  most  Chicago 
children  of  their  age,  untaught  by  their  parents  in  the  pitfalls 
of  the  city,  were  overwhelmed  at  the  thought  of  marrying 
money  and  accompanied  the  two  slavers  to  South  Chicago, 
where  the  marriage  was  to  be  performed.    But  here  the  dream 


150  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

ended.  Instead  of  a  minister,  the  party  was  met  at  the  train 
by  Abe  Weinstein,  keeper  of  a  South  Chicago  resort,  and 
Jennie  Sanduskey,  his  housekeeper.  The  girls  were  taken  to 
the  resort;  they  were  imprisoned,  their  clothes  stolen  and 
by  brute  force  they  were  driven  into  the  dismal  life  of  a  white 
slave. 

Their  eventual  escape  brought  about  the  arrest  of  Brodsky, 
and  Weinstein,  all  three  of  whom  are  now  in  the  jail  awaiting 
trial. 

Just  one  instance.  The  Brodskys  and  Jacobsons  prowl  the 
city  from  end  to  end.  No  young  girl  not  absolutely  sheltered 
by  home  and  home  influences  is  safe  from  them.  The  shop 
girl  on  starvation  wages,  the  factory  girl  on  the  same,  are 
their  especial  victims.  Every  day  the  parasites  infest  the 
down  town  district;  during  the  summer  time  the  amusement 
park  is  their  stamping  ground;  and  the  harvest  they  reap  is 
plentiful  both  in  numbers  and  damnation. 

This  is  what  the  present  crusade  is  planned  to  end.  As  one 
French  procurer  of  women  in  the  city  wrote  to  a  friend  in 
Paris : 

"Chicago  is  cursed  with  reform.  There  is  no  place  for  us 
here.  "We  are  being  forced  out  of  business.  It  is  a  city  ac- 
cursed by.  reformers." 

There  have  been  other  crusades  against  the  evil.  The  evil 
still  exists.  But  here  is  a  crusade  that  will  not  cease  crusad- 
ing until  the  last  white  slaver  has  been  driven  from  the  city 
and  the  last  unfortunate  slave  given  the  chance  to  accept  the 
tradition  that  this  is  ' '  the  land  of  the  free. ' ' 


CHAPTER  XI. 


A  Slum  "Worker's  Story. 

After  we  have  added  some  facts  from  Rev.  Earnest  A.  Bell, 
Superintendent  of  the  Midnight  Mission  in  Chicago,  we  be- 
lieve sufficient  evidence  will  have  been  given  to  prove  beyond 
any  question  that  this  awful  black  traffic  in  white  girls,  which 
has  been  allowed  to  go  on  for  so  many  years,  without  an 
effort  to  hunt  the  offenders,  and  mete  out  to  them  ample 
punishment,  should  come  to  and  end.    Rev.  Bell  says: 

' '  However  unwilling  we  may  be  to  admit  facts  so  shameful, 
the  undeniable  truth  is  established  beyond  dispute  that  a 
prodigious  and  appalling  commerce  in  girls  is  a  part  of  the 
colossal  business  enterprise  of  our  great  modern  cities.  The 
most  hopeful  present  sign  in  the  war  on  the  white  slave  trade 
is  the  sense  of  shame  that  honest  business  men  feel  over  the 
criminal  use  of  capital  and  business  methods  to  exploit  the 
young  people  of  this  and  other  nations. 

The  red-light  districts,  like  a  lake  of  fire,  are  constantly 
ingulfing  unwary  and  unprotected  girls  and  boys,  along 
with  the  wilfully  depraved.  The  fires  of  these  burning  mael- 
stroms, the  illegal  vice  districts,  are  kept  up  in  an  enterpris- 
ing and  systematic  way  by  the  business  ability  of  the  mon- 
strous men  who  keep  the  houses  of  shame.  No  store  on  State 
Street  is  better  arranged  to  attract  purchasers  than  the  crimi- 
nal resorts  are  arranged  to  attract  victims  of  both  sexes. 

Until  recently,  business  men  and  the  plain  people  generally 
could  not  believe  that  systematic  commerce  in  women  and 
girls  existed.    Missionaries  and  prosecutors  who  sounded  the 

151 


152  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

alarm  were  thought  to  be  suffering  from  an  overheated  imagi- 
nation or  possibly  seeking  notoriety  and  free  advertising. 
Business  men  and  editors  of  great  newspapers  asked  for  facts 
— plain,  hard  facts,  without  exaggeration  or  rhetoric. 

Unhappily,  it  has  been  all  too  easy  to  bring  forward  the 
frightful  facts  by  the  hundreds,  demonstrating  to  every  in- 
quirer the  existence  of  a  white  slave  market,  immense  and 
horrible.  Earnest,  shrewd  men  of  affairs,  bankers,  merchants, 
lawyers,  judges,  men  who  never  allow  their  own  imaginations 
of  the  imaginations  of  other  men  to  carry  them  away,  now 
know  all  too  well  for  their  peace  of  mind  that  our  city  is  one 
of  the  great  centers  of  the  most  infamous  traffic  in  the  world. 

However  eager  the  missionaries  may  be  to  make  an  end  of 
sin,  the  lawyers  and  business  men  who  are  opposing  the  white 
slave  trade  have  no  illusions  about  the  speedy  annihilation 
of  vice,  however  desirable  such  annihilation  undoubtedly  is. 
"What  these  business  men  do  seek  to  accomplish  is  to  expose 
and  as  far  as  possibly  destroy  the  commercial  exploitation  of 
the  youth  of  both  sexes  to  their  destruction.  The  criminal 
use  of  capital,  real  estate,  business  ability,  and  methods,  in 
order  to  spread  ruin  and  pestilence  broadcast  through  city 
and  country,  can  be  checked  and  largely  crushed  if  a  few  hun- 
dred capable,  decent  men  will  invest  time  and  money  in  the 
righteous  cause. 

It  is  no  impossible  task  to  drag  a  thousand  dive-keepers, 
procurers,  renting  agents,  and  grafting  officials  before  the 
bar  of  justice  and  put  enough  of  them  in  cells  to  terrify 
the  whole  infernal  brood,  making  grafters  and  dive-keepers 
inmates  at  Joliet. 

It  is  not  enough  to  punish  the  small  fry.  Unless  the  whole- 
salers and  principals  are  crushed  we  are  trifling  with  the  hor- 
rible trade.     The  whole  iniquity  of  giving  a  permit  to  those 


A  Slum  Worker's  Story.  153 

brutes  to  make  commerce  of  girls  is  monstrous.  The  dive 
breeds  the  procurers,  and  breeds  the  grafters;  this  is  the  his- 
toric fact.  We  are  not  in  earnest  till  we  strike  hard  and  often 
at  the  principals  in  the  hideous  business. 

It  is  quite  within  the  power  of  a  dozen  business  men  and 
one  newspaper  The  Tribune,  to  inform  all  Chicago  as  to  the 
exact  facts  of  the  white  slave  trade  and  to  expose  every  person 
profiting  by  these  crimes,  including  those  hypocrites  who  live 
in  Hyde  Park  and  Evanston  on  the  earnings  of  ruined  girls 
in  Chicago's  underworld. 

It  is  almost  easy  to  alarm  the  plain  people  as  to  the  hideous 
consequences  in  the  way  of  diseases  that  attend  the  traffic  in 
girls.  Fifty  thousand  dollars  in  the  right  hands  would  make 
known  to  our  adult  citizens  that  one-fourth  of  the  blind  are 
blind  because  of  the  sins  of  their  fathers,  that  one-fourth  of 
the  women  undergoing  surgical  operations  suffer  thus  because 
of  the  sins  of  their  husbands,  that  about  one-fourth  of  the 
insane  would  be  sane  if  this  pestilent  vice  were  abolished. 

In  India,  where  I  was  a  missionary  to  the  heathen  some 
years  before  I  went  to  the  savages  of  midnight  Chicago,  the 
government  pays  a  bounty  to  any  one  who  brings  proof  of 
having  killed  a  man  eating  tiger  or  a  deadly  serpent.  Let 
our  laws  provide  a  bounty  of  $1,000  a  head,  to  be  paid  to  any 
one  who  will  cage  up  permanently  the  wild  beasts,  the  dive- 
keepers,  who  devour  girls  and  young  men  in  Chicago,  and 
with  them  the  slimy  snakes  that  those  crafty  scoundrels  send 
through  the  land  to  charm  silly  canaries  to  feed  the  cats  and 
dogs  that  live  on  girls." 


CHAPTER  XII. 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray. 

We  are  glad  to  give  the  version  of  United  States  District 
Attorney  Sims  on  this  subject,  "Why   Girls  Go  Astray." 

Mr.  Sims  says: 

"Right  at  the  outset  let  me  say  in  all  frankness  that  I 
would  never,  from  personal  choice,  write  upon  a  subject  of 
this  character.  Its  sensationalism  is  personally  repellant 
to  me.  On  the  other  hand,  no  matter  how  carefully  the  public 
prosecutor  may  preserve  the  legal  viewpoint  and  the  legal 
temperament,  his  work  may  lead  him  into  situations  where 
he  feels  that  he  cannot,  in  common  humanity,  withhold  from 
the  public  a  knowledge  of  the  things  which  he  knows  cannot 
fail  to  be  of  actual  protective  benefit  to  many  homes ;  that  to 
withhold  the  facts  and  disclosures  which  have  come  to  him 
as  an  officer  of  the  law  would  be  to  deprive  the  innocent  and 
the  worthy  of  a  protection  which  might  save  many  a  home 
from  sorrow,  disgrace,  and  ruin. 

Again:  The  results  of  this  legal  work  and  of  the  explana- 
tions of  the  conditions  uncovered  in  my  former  article  have 
brought  to  me  a  gratifying  knowledge  of  the  practical  rescue 
work  being  done  by  the  settlement  and  the  "slum"  workers 
of  Chicago.  They  are  not  only  specialists  in  this  field,  but 
they  are  as  devoted  as  they  are  practical.  More,  perhaps,  be- 
cause of  their  urgent  assurance  that  giving  to  the  public  a 
statement  of  actual  conditions  has  been  of  a  great  service  to 
them  in  their  hand-to-hand  fight  than  for  any  other  reason,  I 
am  moved  to  make  another  statement. 

154 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray.  155 

"When  the  editor  of  the  "Woman's  World"  urged  me  to 
write  of  "The  White  Slave  Traffic  of  To-day,"  I  felt  that  I 
had  an  official  knowledge  of  facts  which  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  country  had  a  right  to  know  in  order  to  pre- 
vent the  possibility  of  their  daughters  falling  victims  to  the 
most  hideous  forms  of  human  slavery  known  in  the  world 
to-day.  This  consideration  moved  me  to  put  aside  my  strong 
personal  feelings  against  appearing  in  print  in  connection 
with  a  subject  so  abhorrent.  Many  results  of  that  article 
have  made  me  glad  that  I  did  so — and  those  results  have  also 
contributed  to  overcome  my  antipathy  to  a  further  pursuit 
of  that  subject.  But  in  following  this  topic  in  a  second 
article  I  shall  again  emphasize  the  fact  that  I  wish  to  say 
what  seems  to  be  needful  in  as  unsensational  a  way  as  pos- 
sible, and  that  I  also  wish  to  do  that  from  the  viewpoint  of  a 
public  prosecutor  who  has,  in  the  ordinary  discharge  of  his 
duties,  encountered  this  appalling  situation,  and  not  at  all 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  sentimentalist. 

So  far  as  the  matter  of  sensationalism  is  concerned,  that 
may  be  disposed  of  in  the  simple  statement  that  the  naked 
recital,  in  the  most  formal  and  colorless  phraseology,  of  the 
facts  already  brought  to  light  by  the  "white  slave"  prosecu- 
tions are  in  themselves  so  sensational  that  the  art  of  the  most 
brilliant  orator,  or  the  cunning  of  the  cleverest  writer,  could 
not  add  an  iota  to  their  sensationalism.  And  it  may  as  well 
be  said  here  that  it  is  quite  impossible  to  even  hint  in  public 
print  of  the  revolting  depths  of  shame  disclosed  by  this  in- 
vestigation. Behind  every  word  that  can  be  said  in  print  on 
this  topic  is  a  word  of  degradation  of  which  the  slightest  hint 
cannot  be  given. 

If  there  are  any  who  are  inclined  to  feel  that  the  term 
"white  slave"  is  a  little  overdrawn,  a  little  exaggerated,  let 


156  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

them  decide  on  that  point  after  considering  this  statement: 
"Among  the  'white  slaves'  captured  in  raids  since  the  ap- 
pearance of  my  first  article  is  a  girl  who  is  now  about  eigh- 
teen years  of  age.  Her  home  was  in  France,  and  when  she 
was  only  fourteen  years  old  she  was  approached  by  a  'white 
slaver'  who  promised  her  employment  in  America  as  a  lady's 
maid  or  companion.  The  wage  offered  was  far  beyond  what 
she  could  expect  to  get  in  her  own  country — but  far  more 
alluring  to  her  than  the  money  she  could  earn  was  the  picture 
of  the  life  which  would  be  hers  in  free  America.  Her  sur- 
roundings would  be  luxurious;  she  would  be  the  constant  re- 
cipient of  gifts  of  dainty  clothing  from  her  mistress,  and 
even  the  hardest  work  she  would  be  called  upon  to  do  would 
be  in  itself  a  pleasure  and  an  excitement. 

"Naturally  she  was  eager  to  leave  her  home  and  trust 
herself  to  one  who  would  provide  her  with  so  enriching  a 
future.  Her  friends  of  her  own  age  seasoned  their  farewells 
to  her  with  envy  of  her  rare  good  fortune. 

"On  arriving  in  Chicago  she  was  taken  to  the  house  of  ill- 
fame  to  which  she  had  been  sold  by  the  procurer.  There  this 
child  of  fourteen  was  quickly  and  unceremoniously  'broken 
in'  to  the  hideous  life  of  depravity  for  which  she  had  been 
entrapped.  The  white  slaver  who  sold  her  was  able  to  drive 
a  most  profitable  bargain,  for  she  was  rated  as  uncommonly 
attractive.  In  fact,  he  made  her  life  of  shame  a  perpetual 
source  of  income,  and  when — not  long  ago — he  was  captured 
and  indicted  for  the  transportation  of  other  girls,  this  girl 
was  used  as  the  agency  of  providing  him  with  $2,000  for  his 
defense. 

"But  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the  mentionable  facts  of 
this  child's  daily  routine  of  life  and  see  if  such  an  existence 
justifies  the  use  of  the  term  'slavery.'     After  she  had  fur- 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray.  157 

nished  a  night  of  servitude  to  the  brutal  passions  of  vile  fre- 
quenters of  the  place,  she  was  then  compelled  each  night  to 
put  off  her  tawdry  costume,  array  herself  in  the  garb  of  a 
scrub-woman  and,  on  her  hands  and  knees,  scrub  the  house 
from  top  to  bottom.  No  weariness,  no  exhaustion,  ever  ex- 
cused her  from  this  drudgery,  which  was  a  full  day's  work 
for  a  strong  woman. 

''After  her  scrubbing  was  done  she  was  allowed  to  go  to  her 
chamber  and  sleep — locked  in  her  room  to  prevent  her  pos- 
sible escape — until  the  orgies  of  the  next  day,  or  rather  night, 
began.  She  was  allowed  no  liberties,  no  freedom,  and  in  the 
two  and  a  half  years  of  her  slavery  in  this  house  she  was 
not  even  given  one  dollar  to  spend  for  her  own  comfort  or 
pleasure.  The  legal  evidence  shows  that  during  this  period 
of  slavery  she  earned  for  those  who  owned  her  not  less  than 
eight  thousand  dollars — and  probably  ten  thousand  dollars!" 

If  this  is  not  slavery,  I  have  no  definition  for  it. 

Let  me  make  it  entirely  clear  that  the  white  slave  is  an 
actual  prisoner.  She  is  under  the  most  constant  surveillance, 
both  by  the  keeper  to  whom  she  is  "let"  and  by  the  procurer 
who  owns  her.  Not  until  she  has  lost  all  possible  desire  to 
escape  is  she  given  any  liberty. 

Many — very  many — letters  have  been  received  from  parents 
who  read  the  first  article  on  this  subject  in  the  September 
issue  of  the  "Woman's  World."  A  considerable  number  of 
them  are  from  ministers  of  the  gospel,  from  officers  and  mem- 
bers of  law  and  order  leagues,  woman's  clubs  and  kindred 
organizations.  But  there  is  a  pathetic  remainder  which  does 
not  come  from  the  public-spirited  servants  of  the  common 
good.  These  letters  are  from  the  fathers  and  mothers  whose 
fears  and  suspicions  were  aroused  by  the  warning  that  the 
girl  who  has  left  her  home  in  the  country,  gone  up  to  the 
city  and  does  not  come  home  to  visit,  needs  to  be  looked  up. 


158  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Before  me,  as  I  write,  is  a  letter  from  a  father  which  is 
a  tragedy  in  a  page.  He  begins  the  note  by  saying  that  the 
warning  has  aroused  him  to  inquire  after  his  "little  girl." 
There  is  a  pathetic  pride  in  his  admission  that  she  was  con- 
sidered and  uncommonly  "pretty  girl"  when  she  left  her 
home  to  take  a  position  in  Chicago.  Her  letters,  he  states, 
have  been  more  and  more  infrequent,  but  that  she  does  oc- 
casionally write  home,  and  sometimes  encloses  a  small  amount 
of  money.  From  the  tone  of  the  father's  note  it  is  evident 
that,  while  he  is  a  trifle  anxious,  he  asks  that  his  daughter 
be  "looked  up"  rather  to  confirm  his  feelings  of  confidence 
that  she  is  all  right  than  otherwise. 

A  glance  at  the  address  where  she  was  to  be  found  left  no 
possible  question  as  to  the  fate  which  had  overtaken  this 
daughter  of  a  country  home.  So  far  as  a  knowledge  of  the 
girl's  mode  of  life  is  concerned,  no  investigation  was  neces- 
sary— the  location  named  being  in  the  center  of  Chicago's 
"red-light"  district. 

However,  the  case  was  placed  in  the  hands  of  a  settlement 
worker,  and  at  this  moment  the  girl  is  waiting,  in  a  place 
of  safety,  for  the  arrival  of  her  father,  who  is  on  his  way  to 
take  her  back  to  the  mother  and  brothers  and  sisters  who 
have  supposed  that  she  was  holding  a  respectable  but  poorly 
paid  position.  They  will,  however,  welcome  a  very  different 
person  from  the  "pretty  girl"  who  went  out  from  that  home 
to  make  her  way  in  the  big  city.  She  is  pitifully  wasted  by 
the  life  which  she  has  led  and  her  constitution  is  so  broken 
down  that  she  cannot  reasonably  expect  many  years  of  life, 
even  under  the  tenderest  care.  What  is  still  worse,  the  fact 
cannot  be  denied  that  her  moral  fibre  is  much  shattered  and 
that  the  work  of  reclamation  must  be  more  than  physical. 

The  "white  slaves"  who  have  been  taken  in  the  course  of 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray.  159 

the  present  prosecution  have,  generally,  been  very  grateful 
for  the  liberation  and  glad  return  to  their  homes.  It  has 
been  necessary — for  their  own  protection  as  well  as  for  other 
reasons — to  commit  some  of  these  unfortunates  to  various 
prisons  pending  the  trial  of  the  cases  in  which  they  are  to 
appear  as  witnesses,  and  practically  every  one  of  them  gives 
unmistakable  evidence  that  imprisonment  is  a  welcome  libera- 
tion by  comparison  with  the  life  of  "white  slavery." 

Now  as  to  the  practical  means  which  parents  should  use  to 
prevent  this  unspeakable  fate  from  overtaking  their  daugh- 
ters. '  They  cannot  do  it  by  assuming  that  their  daughter  is 
all  right  and  that  she  will  take  care  of  herself  in  the  big  city. 
In  a  large  measure  it  seems  impossible  to  arouse  parents — 
especially  those  in  the  country — to  a  realization  that  there  is 
in  every  big  city  a  class  of  men  and  women  who  live  by 
trapping  girls  into  a  life  of  degradation  and  who  are  as  in- 
humanly cunning  in  their  awful  craft  as  they  are  in  their 
other  instincts;  that  these  beasts  of  the  human  jungle  are  as 
unbelievably  desperate  as  they  are  unbelievably  cruel,  and 
that  their  warfare  upon  virtue  is  as  persistent,  as  calculating 
and  as  unceasing  as  was  the  warfare  of  the  wolf  upon  the 
unprotected  lamb  of  the  pioneer  folk  in  the  early  days  of  the 
Western  frontier. 

I  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  the  country  girl  is  in 
greater  danger  from  the  "white  slavers"  than  the  city  girl. 
The  perusal  of  the  testimony  of  many  "white  slaves"  enforces 
this  conclusion.  That  is  because  they  are  less  sophisticated, 
more  trusting  and  more  open  to  the  allurements  of  those  who 
are  waiting  to  prey  upon  them. 

It  is  a  fact  which  parents  of  girls  in  the  country  should 
remember  that  the  "white  slavers"  are  busy  on  the  trains 
coming  into  the  city  and  make  it  a  point  to  "cut  out"  an 


160  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

attractive  girl  whenever  they  can.  This  "cutting  out"  pro- 
cess (I  use  the  technical  term)  consists  of  making  the  girl's 
acquaintance,  gaining  her  confidence  and,  on  one  pretext  or 
another,  inducing  her  to  leave  the  train  before  the  main 
depot  is  reached.  This  is  done  because  the  various  protective 
law  and  order  organizations  have  watchers  at  the  main  rail- 
road stations  who  are  trained  to  the  work  of  "spotting,"  and 
quickly  detect  a  girl  in  the  hands  of  one  of  these  human  beasts 
of  prey.  Generally  these  watchers  are  women  and  wear  the 
badges  of  their  organizations. 

But  suppose  that  the  girl  from  the  country  does  not  chance 
to  fall  in  with  the  "white  slaver"  on  the  train,  that  she 
reaches  the  city  in  safety,  becomes  located  in  a  position — or 
perhaps  in  the  stenographic  school  or  business  college  which 
she  has  come  to  attend — and  secures  a  room  in  a  boarding 
house.  No  human  being,  it  seems  to  me,  is  quite  so  lonely 
as  the  young  girl  from  the  country  when  she  first  comes  to  the 
city  and  starts  in  the  struggle  of  life  there  without  acquaint- 
ances. All  her  instincts  are  social,  and  she  is,  for  the  time 
being,  almost  desolately  alone  in  a  wilderness  of  strange  hu- 
man beings.  She  must  have  some  one  to  talk  to — it  is  the 
law  of  youth  as  well  as  the  law  of  her  sex  to  crave  constant 
companionship.  And  the  consequences  ?  She  is  sentimentally 
in  a  condition  to  prepare  her  for  the  slaughter,  to  make  her 
an  easy  prey  to  the  wiles  of  the  "white  slave"  wolf. 

The  girl  reared  in  the  city  does  not  have  this  peculiar  and 
insidious  handicap  to  contend  with.  She  has  been — from  the 
time  she  could  first  toddle  along  the  sidewalk — educated  in 
wholesome  suspicion,  taught  that  she  must  not  talk  with 
strangers  or  take  candy  from  them,  that  she  must  withdraw 
herself  from  all  advances  and,  in  large  measure,  regard  all 
save  her  own  people  with  distrust.    As  she  grows  older  she 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray.  161 

comes  to  know  that  certain  parts  of  the  city  are  more  dan- 
gerous and  more  "wicked"  than  others;  that  her  comings 
and  goings  must  always  be  in  safe  and  familiar  company; 
that  her  acquaintanceships  and  her  friendships  must  be  scru- 
tinized by  her  natural  protectors  and  that,  altogether,  there 
is  a  definite  but  undefined  danger  in  the  very  atmosphere  of 
the  city  for  the  girl  or  the  young  woman  which  demands  a 
constant  and  protecting  alertness. 

The  training  is  almost  wholly  absent  in  the  case  of  the 
country  girl;  she  is  not  educated  in  suspicion  until  the  pro- 
tective instinct  acts  almost  unconsciously;  her  intercourse 
with  her  world  is  almost  comparatively  free  and  unrestrained ; 
she  is  so  unlearned  in  the  moral  and  social  geography  of  the 
city  that  she  is  quite  as  likely,  if  left  to  her  own  devices,  to 
select  her  boarding  house  in  an  undesirable  as  in  a  safe  and 
desirable  part  of  the  city;  and,  in  a  word,  when  she  comes 
into  the  city  her  innocence,  her  trusting  faith  in  humanity 
in  general,  her  ignorance  of  the  underworld  and  her  loneli- 
ness and  perhaps  homesickness,  conspire  to  make  her  a  ready 
and  an  easy  victim  of  the  "white  slaver." 

In  view  of  what  I  have  learned  in  the  course  of  the  recent 
investigation  and  prosecution  of  the  "white  slave"  traffic, 
I  can  say,  in  all  sincerity,  that  if  I  lived  in  the  country  and 
had  a  young  daughter  I  would  go  to  any  length  of  hardship 
and  privation  myself  rather  than  allow  her  to  go  into  the  city 
to  work  or  to  study — unless  that  studying  were  to  be  done  in 
the  very  best  type  of  an  educational  institution  where  the 
girl  students  were  always  under  the  closest  protection.  The 
best  and  the  surest  way  for  parents  of  girls  in  the  country  to 
porteet  them  from  the  clutches  of  the  "white  slaver"  is  to 
keep  them  in  the  country.  But  if  circumstances  should  seem 
to  compel  a  change  from  the  country  to  the  city,  then  the 


162  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

only  safe  way  is  to  go  with  them  into  the  city ;  but  even  this 
has  its  disadvantages  from  the  fact  that,  in  that  case,  the 
parents  would  themselves  be  unfamiliar  with  the  usages  and 
pitfalls  of  metropolitan  life,  and  would  not  be  able  to  protect 
their  daughters  as  carefully  as  if  they  had  spent  their  own 
lives  in  the  city. 

One  thing  should  be  made  very  clear  to  the  girl  who  comes 
up  to  the  city,  and  that  is  that  the  ordinary  ice  cream  parlor 
is  very  likely  to  be  a  spider's  web  for  her  entanglement.  This 
is  perhaps  especially  true  of  those  ice  cream  saloons  and  fruit 
stores  kept  by  foreigners.  Scores  of  cases  are  on  record  where 
young  girls  have  taken  their  first  step  towards  "white  slav- 
ery" in  places  of  this  character.  And  it  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  a  week  does  not  pass  in  Chicago  without  the  pub- 
lication in  some  daily  paper  of  the  details  of  a  police  court 
case  in  which  the  ice  cream  parlor  of  this  type  is  the  scene 
of  some  girl's  tragedy.  The  only  safe  rule  is  to  keep  away 
from  places  of  this  kind,  whether  in  a  big  city  like  Chicago 
or  in  a  large  country  town.  I  believe  that  there  are  good 
grounds  for  the  suspicion  that  the  ice  cream  parlor,  kept  by 
the  foreigner  in  the  large  country  town,  is  often  a  recruiting 
station,  and  a  feeder  for  the  "white  slave"  traffic.  It  is 
certain  that  this  is  the  case  in  the  big  city,  and  many  evidences 
point  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  kind  of  free-masonry 
among  these  foreign  proprietors  of  refreshment  parlors  which 
would  make  it  entirely  natural  and  convenient  for  the  pro- 
prietor of  a  city  establishment  of  this  kind,  who  is  entangled 
in  the  "white  slave"  trade,  to  establish  relations  with  a  man 
in  the  same  business  and  of  the  same  nationality  in  the  coun- 
try town.  I  do  not  mean  to  infer  by  this  that  all  the  ice 
cream  and  fruit  "saloons"  having  foreign-born  proprietors 
are  connected  with  the  "white  slave"  traffic — but  some  of 


Why  Girls  Go  Astray.  163 

them  are,  and  this  fact  is  sufficient  to  cause  all  careful  and 
thoughtful  parents  of  young  girls  to  see  that  they  do  not 
frequent  these  places. 

In  this  article  it  is  of  course  impossible  to  more  than  hint 
at  the  protective  measures  which  conscientious  parents  of 
girls  should  employ  in  order  to  make  the  way  safe  for  their 
daughters.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Judge  Lindsay,  of 
Denver,  Judge  Mack  of  Chicago,  and  Mr.  Edward  W.  Bok 
of  the  "Ladies'  Home  Journal"  are  right  in  insisting  upon 
greater  frankness  between  parents  and  children  and  that 
every  child  should  have  a  sex  education  at  home  instead  of 
being  compelled  to  pick  it  up  from  contaminating  sources 
on  the  street  and  at  school.  And  I  may  add  that  the  world 
owes  a  debt  to  these  men  who  have  handled  this  delicate  and 
difficult  problem  in  a  practical  as  well  as  a  powerful  manner ; 
and  I  feel  impelled  to  add  that,  in  face  of  the  horrifying  dis- 
closures brought  to  me  in  the  form  of  legal  evidence,  every 
boy  and  girl  of  high  school  age  should  be  taught  something  of 
the  awful  physical  as  well  as  the  moral  consequences  which 
lurk  behind  allurements  of  the  life  in  which  the  ' '  white  slave ' ' 
is  the  central  figure.  These  things  cannot  be  presented  in  the 
public  prints,  but  the  father  who  keeps  close  to  his  boy  and 
the  mother  who  is  a  companion  to  her  daughter  may  reveal 
these  things,  in  the  home,  in  a  way  which  may  save  almost 
untold  suffering.  And  to  such  parents  I  would  say  that  the 
investigations  of  the  United  States  District  Attorney's  office 
in  Chicago  have  brought  together,  as  legal  evidence,  a  mass 
of  facts  as  to  sanitary  conditions  in  the  districts  where  the 
"white  slaves"  are  kept,  which  are  horrifying  and  scarcely 
capable  of  exaggeration. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls. 

Assistant  United  States  District  Attorney  Mr.  Harry  A. 
Parkins,  of  Chicago,  writing  upon  this  subject,  gives  us  more 
facts  to  think  about.  We  hope  we  shall  not  only  think  about 
them  but  act,  in  regard  thereto.    Mr.  Parkin  says : 

"What  can  be  done  about  it? 

There  could  be  no  legitimate  excuse  for  exploiting  the  white 
slave  trade  in  the  public  prints  without  the  definite  and  sin- 
cere purpose  of  securing  practical  and  substantial  protection 
against  this  terrible  social  scourge.  Such  is  as  surely  the  pur- 
pose of  this  article  as  it  has  been  that  of  the  preceding  articles 
by  Hon.  Edwin  W.  Sims  which  have  brought  out  a  vast  and 
interesting  volume  of  correspondence. 

Many  of  these  letters  have  been  from  fathers  and  mothers 
aroused  to  anxiety  about  daughters  who  have  been  allowed  to 
seek  a  livelihood  in  large  cities  without  suitable  oversight 
or  protection.  In  some  instances  the  worst  fears  of  these 
parents  have  been,  by  definite  investigation,  shown  to  be 
all  too  well  founded. 

Others  letters  have  come,  by  the  score,  from  public 
officials  and  public-spirited  men  and  women  who  have 
at  last  been  stirred  to  a  realization  that  there  is 
an  actual,  systematic  and  widespread  traffic  in  girls 
as  definite,  as  established,  as  mercenary  and  as  fiendish 
as  was  the  African  slave  trade  in  its  blackest  days.  And 
practically  all  these  letters  indicate  that  very  few  of  those 
who  have  been  finally  aroused  to  the  enormity  of  existing 

164 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  165 

conditions  have  any  clear  idea  of  what  should  or  may  be 
done  to  protect  these  daughters  of  our  own  people  from  the 
ravages  of  the  white  slave  traders. 

A  letter  from  the  Mayor  of  a  Connecticut  city  is  typical 
of  the  common  misconception  among  cultivated  and  well- 
informed  public  officials  who  have  not  given  the  legal  phases 
of  the  expression  of  the  white  slave  trade  especial  and  ex- 
haustive study.    The  mayor  writes: 

"I  should  think  that  the  Federal  Government  would  have 
to  pass  stringent  laws  providing  a  heavy  penalty  for  all  who 
are  engaged  in  this  business.  The  law  would  then  be  the  same 
in  all  states  and  people  could  not  escape  from  its  provision 
as  they  would  if  the  states  tried  to  take  up  the  matter  and 
passed  conflicting  statutes.  An  organization  might  secure 
the  passage  of  such  an  act  by  the  Federal  Government,  but 
it  hardly  seems  to  me  that  it  is  necessary,  more  than  to  state 
the  facts,  and  have  the  members  of  Congress  take  immediate 
action  that  would  put  an  end  to  the  whole  matter." 

"While  it  is  probably  true  that  the  Federal  Government  has 
power  to  prohibit  the  carrying  of  women  from  one  state  to 
another  for  immoral  purposes,  that  power  has  not  yet  been 
specifically  established  by  actual  tests  in  court  and  that  is 
therefore,  in  a  sense,  undefined.  On  the  other  hand,  the  states, 
under  their  police  power,  have  a  remedy  in  their  own  hands, 
and  it  would  seem  both  logical  and  natural  that  this  power 
be  exercised  in  the  protection  of  its  own  homes  and  daughters. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  have  found  literally  scores  of  cases, 
in  our  investigations  relative  to  the  importation  from  foreign 
countries  of  girls  destined  for  immoral  bouses,  where  Ameri- 
can born  girls  have  been  lured  or  kidnaped  from  a  home  in 
one  state  and  carried  to  some  large  city  in  another  state,  there 
to  be  broken  to  the  life  of  shame. 


166  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  Federal  investigations  in  Chicago  and  other  localities 
have  clearly  established  the  fact  that,  generally  speaking, 
houses  of  ill-fame  in  large  cities  do  not  draw  their  recruits 
to  any  great  extent  from  the  territory  immediately  surround- 
ing them.  For  obvious  reasons  the  white  slavers  who  are  the 
recruiting  agents  for  this  vile  traffic  prefer  to  work  in  states 
more  or  less  distant  from  the  centers  to  which  their  victims 
are  destined. 

In  view  of  all  this  it  must  be  clearly  apparent  that  the 
need  of  the  hour  is  legislation  which  will  make  it  as  difficult 
and  dangerous  for  a  white  slaver  to  take  his  victim  from  one 
state  into  another  as  it  is  for  him  to  bring  a  girl  from  France, 
or  Italy,  or  Canada,  or  any  other  foreign  country,  to  a  house 
of  ill-fame  in  Chicago  or  any  American  city.  Therefore,  it  is 
suggested  that  if  each  State  in  the  Union  would  pass  and 
enforce  severe  and  stringent  laws  against  this  importation, 
this  terrible  traffic  would  be  dealt  a  blow  in  its  most  vulner- 
able part.  Such  an  enactment  might  well  be  worded  as 
follows : 

"Whoever  shall  induce,  entire  or  procure,  or  attempt  to 
induce,  entice  or  procure,  to  come  into  this  state,  any  woman 
or  girl  for  the  purpose  of  prostitution  or  concubinage,  or 
for  any  other  immoral  purpose,  or  to  enter  any  house  of 
prostitution  in  this  state,  shall,  upon  conviction,  be  imprisoned 
in  the  penitentiary  for  a  period  of  not  less  than  one  (1)  nor 
more  than  five  (5)  years  and  be  fined  not  more  than  five  thou- 
sand ($5,000)  dollars." 

One  of  the  strangest  results  brought  about  by  the  recent 
white  slave  prosecutions  in  Chicago  and  the  publicity  which 
they  have  received,  has  been  the  astonishment  of  thousands 
persons,  as  evidenced  by  letters,  at  the  fact  that  such  a  whole- 
sale traffic  is  actually  in  existence.     But  what  is  still  more 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  167 

astounding,  not  to  say  discouraging,  is  the  reluctance  of 
the  other  thousands  to  believe  that  many  hundreds  of  men 
and  women  are  actually  engaged  in  the  business  of  luring 
girls  and  women  to  their  destruction,  and  that  this  infamous 
traffic  is  being  carried  on  in  every  state  of  the  Union  every 
day  of  the  year. 

Perhaps  the  actuality  of  this  awful  avocation  may  be  made 
more  clearly  apparent  to  the  innocent  and  unsophisticated 
doubters  whose  awakening  and  moral  support  is  needed,  if 
I  cite  one  or  two  instances  which  have  come  to  my  personal 
knowledge  within  the  last  few  days. 

In  a  comfortable  farm  home  in  a  state  bordering  upon  Illi- 
nois is  an  uncommonly  attractive  young  girl  who  has,  almost 
by  accident,  been  delivered  from  the  worst  fate  which  can 
possibly  befall  a  young  woman.  Through  secret  service  opera- 
tions one  of  the  most  dangerous  "procurers"  of  this  country 
was  traced  to  the  home  in  which  this  beautiful  girl  had  been 
adopted  as  a  daughter.  The  white  slaver  had  already  in- 
gratiated himself  into  her  confidence  and  that  of  her  foster- 
parents,  and  arrangements  had  practically  been  made  by  which 
she  was  to  accompany  him  to  Chicago,  where  he  had  a  "fine 
position"  awaiting  her.  If  he  had  not  been  located  and  his 
character  made  known  to  the  household  at  the  time  when  this 
was  done,  she  would  now  be  a  white  slave  in  a  Chicago  den. 

Another  case  which  has  had  a  less  fortunate  termination 
is  that  which  involves  the  ' '  fake ' '  marriage,  a  subterfuge  com- 
mon in  this  wretched  traffic.  A  young  man  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  a  handsome  girl  in  the  North  Side  district  of 
Chicago.  He  was  polished  and  plausible  and  the  parents  of 
the  girl,  who  were  ambitious  for  their  daughter's  advance- 
ment, were  apparently  flattered  that  he  should  bestow  his  at- 
tention upon  her.    "When,  after  very  brief  courtship,  he  pro- 


168  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

posed  marriage,  they  offered  no  objections  and  even  set  aside 
their  own  wishes  when  he  suggested  that  he  held  prejudices 
against  being  married  by  a  clergyman  and  against  having  a 
formal  wedding.  Consequently  they  went  before  a  "justice 
of  the  peace,"  who  pronounced  them  man  and  wife — a  "fake" 
justice,  who  was  merely  a  confederate  of  the  white  slaver. 
They  went  at  once  to  San  Antonio,  Texas,  he  having  claimed 
that  he  held  a  very  profitable  position  in  a  large  business 
concern  in  that  city.  "When  he  arrived  there  the  poor  girl 
had  her  awful  awakening,  for  she  was  promptly  sold  into  the 
life  of  shame  without  hope  of  escape  from  its  degrading  servi- 
tude. 

Another  very  effective  regulation  which  every  state  will 
do  well  to  adopt  by  enactment  of  its  general  assembly  is  that 
making  the  premises  leased  or  used  for  a  house  of  ill-fame 
liable  for  any  and  all  fines  against  its  lessee. 

The  following  seems  to  me  a  desirable  clause  covering  this 
point : 

"Whoever  keeps  or  maintains  a  house  of  ill-fame,  or  a 
place  for  the  practice  of  prostitution  or  lewdness,  or  whoever 
patronizes  the  same,  or  lets  any  house,  room  other  other 
premises  for  any  such  purpose,  or  shall  keep  a  lewd,  ill-gov- 
erned or  disorderly  house  to  the  encouragement  of  idleness, 
gambling,  drinking,  fornication  or  other  misbehavior,  shall 
be  fined  not  exceeding  one  thousand  ($1,000)  dollars.  When 
the  lessee  or  keeper  of  a  dwelling  house  or  other  building  is 
convicted  under  this  section  the  lease  or  contract  for  letting 
the  premises  shall,  at  the  option  of  the  lessor,  become  void 
and  the  lessor  may  have  like  remedy  to  recover  the  possession 
as  against  a  tenant  holding  over  after  the  expiration  of  his 
term.  And  whoever  shall  lease  any  house,  room  or  other 
premises,  in  whole  or  in  part,  for  any  of  the  uses  or  purposes 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  169 

finable  under  this  section,  or  knowingly  permits  the  same  to 
be  used  or  kept,  shall  be  fined  not  exceeding  one  thousand 
($1,000)  dollars  and  the  house  or  premises  so  leased,  occu- 
pied or  used  shall  be  held  liable  for,  and  may  be  sold  for, 
any  judgment  obtained  under  this  section. ' ' 

Some  enactment  of  this  nature  is  particularly  desirable  for 
two  reasons:  First,  because  actual  experience  has  shown  that 
judgments  obtained  against  keepers  of  such  houses  are  diffi- 
cult of  collection  and  that  the  ones  against  whom  the  judg- 
ments are  obtained  are  remarkably  resourceful  in  avoiding 
punishment  even  after  conviction.  Second,  it  seems  obvious 
that  when  a  property  owner  knows  that  his  real  estate  is  par- 
ticularly available  for  houses  of  this  character,  he  is,  if  un- 
principled enough  to  do  so,  bound  to  encourage  the  use  of 
his  premises  for  that  which  will  bring  him  the  largest  money 
returns.  This  puts  him  in  the  way  of  fattening  upon  the 
wages  of  the  social  vice  without  incurring  danger  of  punish- 
ment. Naturally  he  becomes  a  friend  of  the  traffic  and  ready 
to  aid  and  abet  it  wherever  and  whenever  he  can.  Therefore 
it  seems  to  me  he  should  no  longer  be  allowed  to  escape  the 
penalties  attached  to  those  who  engage  in  this  infamous  trade. 
As  the  owner  of  the  property  on  which  unlawful  acts  are  per- 
sistently committed,  and  as  a  sharer  in  the  unlawful  profits  of 
those  acts,  he  should  be  made  to  share  also  in  its  perils  and 
punishments.  He  should  be  made  to  feel  that,  as  the  owner  of 
the  property  used  for  the  purpose  of  harboring  fallen  women 
he  is  a  link  in  the  chain  which  draws  innocent  womanhood 
to  its  doom  and  that  he  must  suffer  to  the  full  proportion  of 
his  guilt.  Again,  it  is  the  first  instinct  of  the  lessee  or  keeper 
of  such  a  house,  on  coming  in  contaet  with  the  law,  to  flee 
and  forfeit  his  or  her  bonds.  By  making  the  property  itself 
liable  to  forfeiture,  absolute  security  against  this  kind  of  thing 


170  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

is  established,  thereby  preventing  many  a  miscarriage  of 
justice  and  of  just  penalties. 

Since  the  beginning  of  the  recent  prosecutions  in  Chicago 
a  score  of  keepers,  realizing  their  guilt  and  fearing  prosecu- 
tion have  fled  the  country  and  have  not  yet  been  apprehended. 
If  both  the  Federal  and  the  State  governments  had  a  law  of 
this  kind  the  escape  of  these  criminals  would  not  have  in- 
volved a  complete  defeat  of  the  law  in  their  cases,  for  prosecu- 
tion could  have  been  brought  against  some  person  connected 
with  their  establishments,  and  when  a  conviction  was  secured 
the  property  occupied  by  them  could  have  been  closed  out. 
A  statute  of  this  kind,  wherever  enacted,  can  scarcely  fail  to 
prove  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  effective  of  all  possible 
weapons  against  the  white  slave  traffic.  And  the  smaller 
the  city,  the  more  effective  will  this  weapon  be  found — which 
is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  the  larger  the  city  the 
larger  the  toleration  of  the  social  vice. 

One  of  the  greatest  weapons  in  the  hands  of  the  white 
slavers  and  of  the  keepers  of  houses  of  ill-fame  to  prevent 
the  escape  of  fresh  recruits  and  to  submerge  them  into  hope- 
less slavery  is  the  system  of  indebtedness  which  is  practiced 
in  these  places.  The  one  object  of  those  concerned  in  the 
subjugation  of  a  girl  who  has  become  a  victim  of  the  wiles 
of  the  white  slaver  is  to  break  down  all  hope  of  escape  from 
the  life  of  shame  and  bitterness  into  which  she  has  been  en- 
trapped. Nothing  has  been  found  so  effective  a  means  to  this 
end  as  the  debtor  system.  The  first  thing  a  girl  is  compelled 
to  do  on  being  thrown  into  one  of  these  houses  is  to  buy  an 
expensive  wardrobe  at  from  five  to  six  times  its  actual  value. 
To  be  more  definite,  I  have  in  my  possession  bills  rendered 
against  certain  inmates  taken  from  the  dens.  In  these  bills 
stockings  costing  75  cents  have  been  charged  at  $3.00;  shoes 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  171 

costing  $2.50  are  charged  at  $8.00,  and  kimonos  costing  $4.00 
are  charged  at  $15.00.  As  the  goods  themselves  were  seized 
as  well  as  the  bills  for  them,  I  am  able  to  make  this  statement. 
In  every  case  I  have  found  that  the  girl  was  compelled  to 
renew  her  outfit  of  finery  whenever  the  keeper  so  dictated, 
without  regard  to  her  need  of  it.  Our  investigations  have  all 
shown  that  when  a  keeper  imagined  that  a  girl,  an  inmate,  is 
intending  to  leave  the  place  either  openly  or  secretly,  a  new 
outfit  is  forced  upon  her  at  absurd  figures  and  she  is  told 
that  she  cannot  leave  until  every  cent  of  her  indebtedness 
has  been  wiped  out,  and  that  if  she  attempts  to  do  so,  they 
will  "put  the  law  on  her."  In  the  dozens  of  cases  which  I 
have  examined  there  has  not  been  a  single  one  which  has 
failed  to  show  evidence  of  this  kind.  I  have  in  my  possession 
numerous  copies  of  bills  rendered  against  these  wretched 
women  in  which  their  costumes  reach  as  high  a  figure  as 
$1,200  and  even  $1,500.  This  indebtedness  system  is  mutually 
recognized  and  enforced  between  the  keepers  of  all  houses; 
in  other  words,  no  girl  can  leave  one  house  and  enter  another 
unless  she  is  able  to  show  that  she  leaves  no  indebtedness  be- 
hind her. 

As  this  phase  of  business  in  the  underworld  is  one  of  the 
main  props  of  white  slavery  it  is  well  to  go  into  it  with  defi- 
niteness  and  to  give  examples  which  illustrate  its  operation. 

In  one  of  the  recent  raids  a  big  Irish  girl  was  taken  and 
held  as  a  witness.  She  was  old  enough,  strong  enough  and 
wise  enough,  it  seemed  to  me,  to  have  overcome  almost  any 
kind  of  opposition — even  physical  violence.  She  could  have 
put  up  a  fight  which  few  men,  no  matter  how  brutal,  would 
care  to  meet.  I  asked  her  why  she  did  not  get  out  of  the 
house,  which  was  one  of  the  worst  in  Chicago.  Her  answer 
was:    "Get  out — I  can't.     They  make  us  buy  the  cheapest 


172  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

rags  and  they  are  charged  against  us  at  fabulous  prices; 
they  make  us  change  outfits  at  intervals  of  two  or  three  weeks, 
until  we  are  so  deeply  in  debt  that  there  is  no  hope  of  ever 
getting  out  from  under.  Then,  to  make  such  matters  worse, 
we  seldom  get  an  accounting  oftener  than  once  in  six  months 
and  sometimes  ten  months  or  a  year  will  pass  between  settle- 
ments— and  when  we  do  get  an  accounting  it  is  always  to 
find  ourselves  deeper  in  debt  than  before.  We've  simply  got 
to  stick  and  that's  all  there  is  to  it." 

To  frame  an  enactment  which  will  knock  this  prop  of  in- 
debtedness system  out  from  under  the  white  slave  business 
might  appear  to  be  a  most  difficult  matter,  and  yet  I  believe 
that  the  legislature  which  enacts  a  statute  of  which  the  fol- 
lowing clause  is  the  essential  part  will  go  a  long  way  towards 
accomplishing  this  most  desired  result. 

"And  whoever  shall  hold,  detain,  restrain,  or  attempt  to 
hold,  detain  or  restrain  in  any  house  of  prostitution  or  other 
place,  any  female  for  the  purpose  of  compelling  such  female, 
directly  or  indirectly,  by  voluntary  or  involuntary  service  or 
labor,  to  pay,  liquidate  or  cancel  any  debt,  dues  or  obligation 
incurred  therein  or  said  to  have  been  incurred  in  such  house 
of  prostitution  or  other  place,  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  a 
felony  and,  upon  conviction  thereof,  shall  be  imprisoned  in  the 
penitentiary  at  hard  labor  for  not  less  than  two  or  more  than 
ten  years." 

There  is  only  one  other  enactment  which  all  legislatures 
should  be  urged  to  pass,  and  that  is  one  which  strikes  directly 
at  the  white  slave  trader,  the  "procurer,"  the  owner  or  the 
' '  fellow. ' '  Keepers  of  houses  of  ill-fame  have  discovered  that 
the  hideous  task  or  keeping  the  unwilling  white  slave  in  sub- 
jection is  much  easier  if  a  certain  ownership  of  her  is  vested 
in  a  man.    In  many  cases  this  man  is  the  one  who  is  directly 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  173 

responsible  for  placing  the  girl  in  the  house,  but  this  is  not 
invariably  the  case.  When  it  is  the  case  he  receives  not  only 
the  lump  purchase  price  down  on  the  delivery  of  his  victim 
to  the  house,  but  he  is  recognized  by  the  keeper  as  her  owner 
and  master,  the  one  to  whom  a  certain  percentage  of  her  in- 
come is  paid  and  with  whom  all  settlement  of  her  accounts  are 
made.  What  is  more  important  in  the  eyes  of  the  keeper 
is  that  this  man  is  held  absolutely  responsible  for  the  girl's 
subjection,  and  if  she  attempts  to  escape  he  must  cajole, 
threaten  or  beat  her  into  subjection.  In  one  of  the  recent 
raids  I  chanced  to  come  upon  visual  demonstration  of  how  this 
peculiar  demonstration  of  how  this  peculiar  phase  of  white 
slavery  operates  in  actual  practice.  One  of  these  "fellows" 
was  disciplining  a  girl  whom  he  "owned" — and  doing  so  by 
the  gentle  process  of  forcing  her  against  the  wall  with  his 
hands  at  her  throat. 

Some  of  these  "fellows"  "own"  two  or  more,  or  perhaps 
more,  white  slaves,  and  on  the  income  of  their  slavery  these 
brutes  live  in  luxury  at  expensive  hotels,  maintain  expensive 
automobiles  and  lead  lives  of  luxury,  idleness  and  dissipation. 

While  some  states  have  statutes  directly  aimed  at  this  sys- 
tem, it  has  been  found  extremely  difficult  to  secure  convictions 
against  these  most  contemptible  of  all  white  slavers,  for  the 
reason  that  all  of  the  existing  statutes,  so  far  as  I  am  in- 
formed, make  it  necessary,  at  least  by  implication,  for  the 
prosecution  to  establish  the  fact  that  they  derive  their  entire 
support  from  white  slaves  under  their  control — in  other 
words,  it  devolves  upon  the  state  to  demonstrate  that  the  man 
on  trial  has  no  other  visible  means  of  support.  As  a  conse- 
quence, the  defense  set  up  is  almost  invariably  calculated  to 
prove  that  the  man  on  trial  is  a  solicitor  for  a  tailoring  es- 


174  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

tablishment,  a  laundry  or  some  other  legitimate  business  en- 
terprise. 

In  view  of  this  fact,  it  seems  to  me  an  enactment  drawn 
upon  the  following  lines  would  be  effective: 

"Any  person  who  shall  knowingly  accept  or  receive  in 
whole  or  in  part  support,  or  maintenance  from  the  proceeds 
or  earnings  of  any  woman  engaged  in  prostitution  shall  be 
deemed  guilty  of  a  felony  and  on  conviction  thereof  shall 
be  confined  in  the  penitentiary  not  less  than  one  (1)  nor  more 
than  three  (3)  years  and  fined  not  exceeding  one  thousand 
dollars,  or  both,  in  the  discretion  of  the  court. ' ' 

Not  long  since  I  was  asked  how  many  persons  I  supposed 
Chicago  contained  who  would  come  under  a  statute  of  this 
kind  and  who  ought  to  receive  sentence  under  it.  My  reply 
was  this : 

"Probably  there  are  twenty  thousand  women  in  Chicago 
to-day  following  the  so-called  profession  of  prostitution,  and 
it  would  seem  to  me,  from  the  testimony  obtained  in  the  course 
of  the  recent  white  slave  prosecutions  here  that  at  least  one- 
fourth  that  number  or  five  thousand,  are  supported  in  whole 
or  in  part  in  this  manner  and  would  therefore  come  within 
the  meaning  of  such  a  statute." 

"What  is  the  quickest  and  most  practical  way  by  which  I 
may  get  action  on  the  legislature  of  my  own  state?" 

I  would  suggest  the  following  methods:  Find  the  names 
of  the  men  Avho  represent  your  district  in  the  general  assembly 
of  your  state  and  write  to  each  one  of  them  a  letter  sub- 
stantially as  follows: 

"Hon 

II  Dear  Sir:  I  am  in  hearty  sympathy  with  the  legislation 
against  the  white  slave  traffic  proposed  by  the  "Woman's 
World"  and  urge  you  to  secure  the  passage  of  laws  which 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  175 

shall  embody  the  clauses  and  enactment  suggested  in  the  en- 
closed article  clipped  from  that  journal. 

''You  surely  will  not  question  the  worthiness  or  the  need 
of  laws  of  this  kind  and  I  ask  the  further  favor  of  a  reply 
from  you  indicating  your  attitude  with  regard  to  this  most 
important  matter. 

"Yours  sincerely," 


Also  I  would  suggest  that  readers  who  are  members  of 
churches  or  habitual  attendants  upon  church  services,  take  this 
matter  up  with  the  pastors  of  their  churches,  each  requesting 
his  or  her  pastor  to  confer  with  the  other  pastors  of  his  com- 
munity to  the  end  of  preparing  a  petition  to  be  sent  to  the 
representatives  from  that  district  in  the  legislature,  urging 
the  passage  of  the  enactments  above  suggested.  If  these  pe- 
titions are  vigorously  circulated  they  will  receive  the  signa- 
tures of  practically  the  entire  citizenship  of  every  community 
and  will  have  a  powerful,  not  to  say  compelling,  influence 
upon  the  representatives  and  state  senators  who  receive  them. 
Women's  clubs,  law  and  order  leagues,  Christian  Endeavor 
Societies,  Epworth  Leagues,  granges  and  farmers'  institutes, 
Young  Men's  Christian  Associations,  Young  Women's  Chris- 
tian Associations  and  Women's  Temperance  Unions  in  every 
city,  village  and  hamlet  of  the  country  can  also  exert  a  power- 
ful protection  and  practical  influence  in  securing  such  legis- 
lation as  a  protection  against  the  ravages  of  the  white  slavers 
by  passing  suitable  resolutions  of  endorsement  and  sending 
those  resolutions  to  the  men  representing  their  several  com- 
munities in  the  great  assembly  of  their  state.  While,  as  I 
say,  these  memorials  on  the  part  of  respected  organizations 
will  do  a  useful  work  in  shaping  the  course  of  legislation,  this 
will  not  take  the  place  or  do  the  work  of  the  individual  per- 


176  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

sonal  letter,  and  every  reader  who  is  sincerely  and  earnestly 
interested  in  securing  such  legislation  as  I  have  outlined  will 
miss  the  main  stroke  of  influence  if  he  or  she  fails  to  write 
a  personal  letter  to  the  men  representing  his  or  her  district 
in  the  general  assembly  of  the  state. 

And  whenever  such  a  letter  is  written  the  various  clauses 
given  in  this  article  should  be  incorporated. 

I  cannot  close  this  article  without  referring  to  the  statement 
made  at  the  outset  to  the  effect  that  many  persons  still  re- 
main unconvinced  that  the  white  slave  traffic  is  a  thing 
widespread  and  actual  existence;  that  it  is  the  established 
calling  of  hundreds  of  men  to  lure  and  kidnap  innocent  girls 
into  a  life  of  shame  and  to  sell  them  into  houses  of  prostitu- 
tion, where  they  are  kept  against  their  will  in  the  most  re- 
volting of  all  human  slaveries. 

In  my  desk  at  this  moment  is  a  letter  from  which  the  follow- 
ing is  taken : 

"There  are  in  that  house,  No. ,  two  girls  by  the  names 

of  Annie  and  Edith.    One  has  been  there  for  two  years  and 

is  not  allowed  to  go  out  of  the  house is  not  even  allowed 

to  write  to  her  own  people,  and  whose  mail  is  opened  and 
read  before  she  is  allowed  to  look  at  it.  The  other  girl  has 
been  there  seven  months  and  has  never  been  out  of  the  house. ' ' 

This  letter  was  written  by  one  who  knew  the  facts  in  the 
case. 

A  very  few  days  ago  this  pitiful  case  was,  in  an  official 
way,  brought  to  my  attention.  A  little  German  girl  in  Buffalo 
married  a  man  who  deserted  her  about  the  time  her  child  was 
born.  Her  baby  is  now  about  eight  or  nine  months  old.  Al- 
most immediately  after  her  husband  ran  away  she  formed  the 
acquaintance  of  an  engaging  young  man  who  claimed  to  take 
deep  interest  in  her  welfare,  and  in  that  of  a  certain  girl 


Practical  Means  of  Protecting  Girls.  177 

friend  of  hers.  He  persuaded  them  both  that  if  they  would 
accompany  him  to  Chicago  he  would  immediately  place  them 
in  employment  which  would  be  far  more  profitable  than  any- 
thing they  could  obtain  in  Buffalo.  Supposing  that  the  work 
awaiting  her  was  entirely  legitimate  and  respectable  the  little 
mother  took  her  baby  and,  in  company  with  the  young  man 
and  with  her  friend,  came  to  Chicago.  The  next  task  of  this 
human  fiend  was  to  persuade  this  "child  widow"  that  it  would 
be  necessary  for  her  to  place  her  baby  temporarily  in  a  found- 
lings' home  in  order  that  it  might  not  interfere  with  her  em- 
ployment. This  accomplished,  he  took  the  two  young  women 
at  once  to  a  notorious  house  and  sold  them  into  white  slavery. 
Thenceforth  this  fellow  has  lived  in  luxury  upon  the  shameful 
earnings  of  these  two  victims.  The  young  mother  has  at- 
tempted by  every  means  imaginable  to  escape  from  his 
clutches  and  at  last  has  importuned  him  into  a  promise  to  re- 
lease his  hold  upon  her  on  the  payment  of  $300.  She  is  still 
"working  out"  the  price  of  her  release.  It  is  scarcely  too 
much  to  say  that  she  looks  twice  her  age. 

One  other  example  from  the  current  history  of  the  white 
slave  trade  as  it  is  pursued  to-day.  Only  a  few  nights  since 
a  physician  was  calling  professionally  at  one  of  the  houses 
of  Chicago's  "red  light"  district.  Two  men  and  a  young 
woman  entered  the  door  just  before  him  and  took  seats  at  a 
table.  A  glance  at  her  fresh  and  innocent  face  was  enough 
to  convince  him  that  she  was  out  of  her  element  and  probably 
un  aware  of  the  character  of  her  surroundings.  Stepping 
abruptly  to  the  table,  the  physician  looked  the  young  woman 
straight  in  the  eye  and  asked : 

"Madam,  do  you  know  that  this  is  a  house  of  prostitu- 
tion?" 

' '  No, ' '  was  the  trembling  answer. 


178  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

"Are  you  a  woman  of  the  street?"  he  persisted. 

She  flushed  indignantly,  but  finally  replied: 

"No — I  am  a  respectable  woman  and  I  supposed  I  was 
being  taken  to  a  ladies'  cafeV' 

Her  companions  bolted  for  the  door  and  made  their  escape. 
The  physician  then  called  a  policeman,  who  escorted  the  young 
woman  to  her  home  and  found  her  statements  to  be  true — 
that  she  was  a  respectable  girl  and  had  believed  her  "friends" 
to  be  taking  her  to  a  respectable  restaurant. 

Tragedies  of  this  kind  are  happening  every  day  and  all 
over  this  country.  It  is  time  for  the  decent  people  of  the 
United  States  to  wake  up,  realize  what  is  going  on  in  the 
underworld  and  to  take  strong  measures  to  protect  their 
daughters  and  their  neighbors'  daughters  from  the  hands 
of  the  most  despicable  and  inhuman  of  all  criminals,  the  white 
slave  traders. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


Let  Us  Do  Something. 

We  have  given  the  extensive  statements  of  these  different 
officers  and  experienced  slum  workers,  even  though  there  may 
appear  to  be  a  repetition  of  some  statements.  We  want  the 
reader  to  see  that  the  reports  of  these  reliable  officers  are 
corroborative. 

There  is  no  end  to  cases  that  can  be  cited  proving  that  this 
horrible  slave  trade  exists;  and  that  it  is  the  blackest,  vilest, 
most  inhuman  evil  that  was  ever  allowed  to  hide  so  long  in 
the  towns  and  cities  of  a  nation  that  pretends  to  be  the 
greatest  civilized  and  best  Christianized  government  on  earth. 

We  deserve  the  greatest  censure  ever  meted  out  to  a  peo- 
ple for  the  tolerance  of  a  great  crime,  if  we  do  not  vigorously 
and  speedily  demand  deliverance  from  the  shame  of  being  a 
silent  endorser  of  this  infernal  traffic  in  these  girls. 

If  the  government  remains  silent,  and  does  not  take  imme- 
diate steps  to  help  abolish  this  crime,  it  will  be  an  inexcusable 
neglect  that  should  call  down  upon  the  heads  of  our  officers 
the  strongest  condemnation  ever  heaped  upon  the  heads  of 
indifferent,  cowardly  officers. 

If  a  mine  disaster  occurs,  or  a  ship  sinks,  or  a  fire  breaks 
out,  killing  a  hundred  victims,  the  papers  at  once  spread  the 
news  of  the  great  accident ;  and  if  necessaiy,  relief  funds  are 
raised,  rescuers  are  set  at  work  to  recover  the  bodies  and  re- 
lieve the  distressed.  This  is  just  as  it  should  be ;  but  it  seems 
strange  that  it  is  so  difficult  to  arouse  the  public  sympathy  in 

179 


180  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

behalf  of  our  boys  and  girls  who  are  being  kidnapped  into 
these  dens  of  vice. 

Not  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  boys  and  men  are  vic- 
tims of  the  saloon  every  year,  and  60,000  girls  go  to  destruc- 
tion, disease  and  death  every  year  through  the  brothels. 

A  victim  of  the  saloon  dies  every  four  minutes  by  the  tick 
of  the  clock,  and  a  girl  in  the  brothel  about  every  ten  min- 
utes, and  these  evils  which  kill  more  victims  in  our  land 
every  year  than  war,  pestilence  and  famine  combined,  is  re- 
corded as  a  necessary  evil,  and  becomes  a  protected  industry 
of  the  government  from  which  we  derive  revenue. 

The  people  sleep  on  and  do  not  seem  to  know  or  care 
whether  rescuers  are  kept  at  work  or  not,  to  save  the  bodies 
and  souls  of  these  girls  and  boys.  Rockefeller  will  give  one 
million  dollars  to  fight  the  hook  worm,  but  he,  like  all  others 
appealed  to,  will  not  give  one  hundred  cents  to  fight  the  worm 
of  the  still,  and  these  demons  in  human  shape  who  trap  inno- 
cent girls  in  these  pits  of  hell  and  death.  It  will  help  mightily 
in  this  fight  for  the  suppression  of  the  white  slave  trade,  if 
our  officers  and  workers  remember,  that  just  as  it  is  true  that 
so  long  as  the  saloon  is  allowed  to  remain  open,  it  will  slaugh- 
ter its  victims  by  the  hundreds  of  thousands  every  year;  so 
it  is  also  true  that  as  long  as  the  brothels  are  allowed  to  exist 
there  will  be  vile  men  who  will  catch  girls  to  supply  them. 
Some  of  the  cities  license  the  brothels  as  a  source  of  revenue, 
and  other  cities  collect  regular  fines,  which  amounts  to  the 
same  thing. 

If  there  were  no  vice  preserves,  the  strongest  help  to  the 
white  slave  market  would  be  secured.  As  one  has  so  well  put 
it— 

"This  case  is  thoroughly  typical.  Every  girl  stolen  for  vice 
is  taken  to  a  vice  preserve. 


Let  Us  Do  Something.  181 

There  was  an  old  king  once,  the  fable  tells  us,  who  made 
a  law  that  thieves  should  go  free  but  receivers  of  stolen  goods 
should  die ;  and  when  his  people  protested  against  the  law,  he 
showed  them  that  without  holes  into  which  to  run  with  their 
plunder,  even  the  weasels  will  not  steal.  Close  the  slave 
markets,  and  the  white  slave  traffic  ceases.  Leave  the  slave 
markets  open,  and  you  may  enact  as  severe  laws  as  you  please, 
and  the  state's  attorney's  office  may  put  its  honesty  beyond 
question — if  that  thing  can  be  imagined  in  Chicago — and  the 
slave  traffic  will  go  on,  more  or  less. 

The  slave  traders  will  know  that  the  American  people 
"mean  business"  on  the  day  when  we  enforce  the  law  that 
forbids  the  existence  of  the  slave  market." 

Any  city,  state  or  nation  taking  revenue  from  such  sources 
is  as  bad  as  the  trappers  themselves.  It  is  a  sentiment  akin 
to  savagery,  and  ought  to  be  protested  against  in  terms  strong 
enough  to  end  the  crime. 

Our  decisions  in  such  matters  should  be  in  favor  of  the 
weak  against  the  strong,  for  the  subjects  of  injustice  rather 
than  the  officers  in  power  who  permit  the  evils  which  rob  and 
MIL 

There  should  be  something  more  than  municipal  and  state 
punishment  to  these  traitors  who  deal  in  slave  girls.  The 
business  is  carried  on  largely  by  gamblers,  black-legs,  hack 
politicians  and  pimps,  agents  of  the  commercial  pirates  who 
established  the  traffic,  and  who  are  carrying  it  forward  to  the 
everlasting  disgrace  of  the  state  and  nation. 

Under  this  odious  and  abhorrent  traffic  thousands  of  poor, 
innocent  girls  are  lured  to  this  country,  ruined  and  placed  in 
brothels  under  contract  to  end  their  blasted  lives  in  nameless 
horror. 

The  point  above  all  others  to  take  into  account  is  that  these 


182  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

girls  are  uniformly  the  children  of  poverty,  the  daughters  of 
the  working  class,  and  for  this  reason  it  is  of  grave  signifi- 
cance and  its  lesson  should  be  graven  deeply  upon  the  hearts 
of  all  the  millions  who  toil. 

It  is  not  after  all  so  very  strange  that  a  capitalist  class 
supreme  court  should  legalize  the  white  slave  traffic,  seeing 
that  the  white  slaves  are  all  of  the  working  class  and  a  part 
of  the  great  bulk  of  human  commodities  in  which  capitalism 
traffics  to  maintain  its  trust-blown  power  upon  a  foundation 
of  broken  hearts  and  blasted  lives. 

The  legalizing  of  the  white  slave  traffic  is  a  peculiarly  vir- 
ulent symptom  of  class  ruled  and  class  corrupted  society. 

If,  as  some  claim,  the  government  is  powerless  to  act  in  this 
matter,  then  governments  have  failed  to  be  a  proper  protec- 
tion to  the  lives  of  the  people. 

It  is  not  a  sensible  conclusion  to  say  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment cannot  do  anything  about  abolishing  a  hideous  crime 
such  as  this  slave  trade  is.    It  can  and  shall  be  stopped. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


Striking  the  Head  op  the  Evil. 

We  appreciate  to  the  limit,  all  these  good,  brave  officers 
have  said,  in  regard  to  punishing  the  keepers  of  the  dives, 
and  the  owners  of  buildings,  as  well  as  the  procurers,  as  a 
means  of  helping  to  stamp  out  the  evil ;  but  there  is  one  phase 
of  the  problem  none  have  referred  to,  which  to  us  seems  as 
highly  important  as  any  point  of  the  question  to  be  consid- 
ered, and  that  is,  that  the  deepest  root  of  the  evil  is  the  exist- 
ence of  the  public  homes  of  shame. 

Just  so  long  as  there  are  public  brothels,  many  of  them 
licensed  and  protected  by  the  city  government  the  same  as 
saloons,  just  so  long  will  there  be  a  demand  for  a  slave  mar- 
ket, and  just  so  surely  will  there  be  traders  and  trappers  and 
innocent  girls  sacrificed  to  satisfy  the  greed  of  two-legged 
vulturous  animals,  called  men. 

To  insist  that  public  houses  of  shame  are  necessary,  is  to 
admit  we  are  worse  than  beasts,  and  that  we  are  far  below 
heathen  nations  in  morality  and  purity. 

To  argue  that  if  there  were  no  places  where  men  may  go 
at  will  to  diseased  women  and  buy  sexual  indulgence,  is  to 
stamp  our  men  with  such  odious  characters,  as  ought  to  in- 
spire every  man  with  a  spark  of  descency  left  in  him  to  re- 
sent such  accusations  which  place  him  lower  than  the  animals. 

We  have  congressmen  who  will  argue  that  the  only  way  to 
keep  the  ranks  of  our  standing  army  filled,  is  to  offer  men 
the  indulgence  of  the  saloon  and  brothel.  An  army  made  up 
of  men  of  such  a  character,  are  worth  very  little  in  the  time 

183 


184  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

of  war.  But  this  is  not  true;  it  is  not  the  American  soldier 
who  is  clamoring  for  the  post  saloon  and  brothel,  but  the 
beasts  of  men  who  wish  to  profit  off  the  soldiers  meagre  allow- 
ance, backed  up  by  congressmen  who  have  little  wit  and  less 
principle,  and  who  go  to  Congress  to  make  money  for  them- 
selves and  not  to  protect  the  welfare  of  the  people. 

The  moral  standards  of  many  congressmen  would  not  bear 
microscopic  inspection.  There  may  be  more  truth  than  we 
know  in  the  statement  of  Mormon  Smoots,  who  said:  "The 
only  difference  between  me  and  some  other  congressmen  is, 
I  own  my  wives  and  take  care  of  them,  and  they  do  not." 

If  we  wish  to  discourage  prostitution  and  protect  innocent 
girls  from  slave  traders,  we  must  stop  teaching  that  abomin- 
able theory  that  homes  of  prostitution  are  necessary.  Until 
we  do  this,  these  infernal  dens  will  demand  and  secure  vic- 
tims. 

It  is  true  beyond  any  question  of  doubt  that  the  majority 
of  women  who  become  inmates  of  brothels  have  been  de- 
cieved,  lured  or  trapped.  Some  have  trusted  some  unprin- 
cipled man  too  far  and  her  first  act  of  shame  begat  her  the 
condemnation  of  the  people  around  her,  and  the  frowns  and 
slights,  the  withdrawal  of  friendship  has  cast  her  out  and 
hurled  her  down  to  ruin. 

The  man  who  ruined  her  can  go  on  the  same  as  ever,  and 
if  he  chooses,  have  his  pick  of  the  best  girls  in  the  town ;  but 
the  victim  of  his  passion  and  cowardly  friendship  must  for- 
ever be  a  scarlet  woman. 

Why  should  a  man  be  given  liberty  to  do  wrong  and  retain 
his  reputation,  and  a  woman  be  kicked  down  and  out  with  the 
first  misstep  she  makes? 

How  long  will  our  women  help  to  encourage  this  double 
standard  of  morals?    The  greatest  objection  to  segregation  of 


Striking  the  Head  of  the  Evil.  185 

the  social  evil  is,  that  they  propose  to  segregate  the  women 
and  allow  the  men  to  roam  around  at  will.  Men  may  go  in 
and  out  of  the  segregated  district  to  spread  low  moral  teach- 
ing and  bodily  disease,  but  the  women  they  visit  must  be  kept 
in  these  pens  of  vice  like  prisoners  of  shame.  We  should 
teach  that  a  man  who  visits  a  prostitute  is  not  one  whit  better 
than  the  prostitute,  and  that  if  one  is  a  menace  to  decent  so- 
ciety, the  other  is  also. 

Many  a  girl  will  allow  a  young  man  who  visits  prostitutes 
to  sit  in  her  home  making  love  to  her,  and  if  she  were  to  meet 
the  prostitute  he  spent  his  hours  with  the  night  before  she 
would  not  allow  her  dress  to  touch  the  garments  of  the  un- 
clean woman. 

Women,  get  this  fixed  in  your  mind,  and  never  forget  it — 
that  the  woman  is  just  as  worthy  of  your  recognition  as  the 
man  who  layed  with  her.  Let  us  cease  teaching  the  dangerous 
doctrine  that  men  should  have  the  greatest  liberty  desired  for 
sexual  indulgence,  and  not  be  condemned,  but  a  woman  must 
be  forever  crushed  to  the  ground  in  shame  for  even  one  mis- 
take. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


Instructions  to  the  Youth. 


The  Prodigal  Daughter. 

To  the  home  of  the  father  returning, 

The  prodigal  weary  and  worn, 
Is  greeted  with  joy  and  thanksgiving, 

As  when  on  his  first  natal  morn. 
A  robe  and  a  ring  is  his  portion, 

The  servants  as  suppliants  bow, 
||:He  is  clad  in  fine  linen  and  purple, 

In  return  for  his  penitent  vow. :  1 1 

But  ah!  for  the  prodigal  daughter, 

Who  has  wandered  away  from  the  home, 
Her  feet  must  still  press  the  dark  valley, 

And  thro'  the  wild  wilderness  roam, 
Alone  on  the  bleak  barren  mountains, 

The  mountain  so  dreary  and  cold, 
||  :No  hand  is  outstretched  in  fond  pity, 

To  welcome  her  back  to  the  fold. :  1 1 

But  thanks  to  the  Shepherd  whose  mercy 

Still  follows  the  sheep  tho'  they  strey, 
The  weakest  and  e'en  the  forsaken, 

He  bears  on  His  bosom  away, 
And  in  the  bright  mansions  of  glory, 

Which  the  blood  of  His  sacrifice  won, 
||:There  is  room  for  the  prodigal  daughter, 

As  well  as  the  prodigal  son. :  1 1 


186 


Instructions  to  the  Youth.  187 

In  order  to  safeguard  our  girls  from  this  awful  fate,  we 
need  to  do  more  than  warn  them  of  the  existence  of  the 
slave  trade,  and  caution  them  how  to  avoid  temptation  in  the 
cities.    They  must  be  taught  sex  knowledge. 

Our  children  and  young  people  must  have  a  better  under- 
standing of  their  physical  selves.  It  is  a  crime  against  chil- 
dren to  bring  them  into  this  world  by  no  will  or  petition  of 
their  own,  and  then  withhold  from  them  the  knowledge  they 
need  to  help  them  to  know  their  bodies;  its  different  pur- 
poses, and  how  to  care  for  them  in  order  that  they  may  have 
the  very  best  possible  opportunity  to  grow  up  strong  and 
pure  physically  as  well  as  mentally  and  spiritually. 

No  wonder  children  go  astray !  The  majority  of  parents  tell 
them  nothing  in  regard  to  their  bodies,  and  sexual  knowledge ; 
and  many  of  them  have  the  great  misfortune  to  be  born  of 
Godless  parents,  who  leave  them  entirely  ignorant  of  the 
teachings  of  a  Christian  life. 

Children  from  many  of  the  very  best  families,  however,  are 
not  taught  the  great  mysteries  of  their  bodies,  and  when  they 
learn  anything  in  the  way  of  sexual  knowledge,  they  must 
pick  it  up  from  playmates  on  the  street,  or  the  school  ground ; 
and  instead  of  having  this  knowledge  accompanied  with  the 
sweet,  sacred  sentiment  that  should  surround  it,  they  get  the 
impressions  of  low,  sensual  teachings  from  dwarfed  minds  and 
vulgar  thoughts. 

It  is  pitiable  beyond  description,  the  number  of  children 
that  have  ruined  themselves  by  sexual  self-abuse,  and  sexual 
relations,  because  parents  did  not  properly  safeguard  them, 
and  at  the  proper  time,  impart  to  them  the  sex  knowledge  it 
was  their  right  to  have. 

Many  thousands  have  become  nervous  wrecks,  and  been  ob- 
liged to  go  on  through  life  with  dwarfed  bodies  and  brains, 


188  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

because  of  this  inexcusable  neglect  of  parents  to  properly 
warn  and  teach  them  about  their  bodies. 

Not  a  few  of  the  inmates  of  prisons,  almshouses,  reform 
schools  and  charitable  institutions  owe  their  life  of  folly, 
crime  and  failure  to  this  great  neglect.  The  time  has  come 
when  this  false  modesty  of  parents  with  their  children  on  the 
mystery  of  sex  should  cease.  It  is  not  only  a  failure  of  the 
performance  of  duty  on  the  parents,  but  positively  a  crime 
against  their  own  children,  to  thus  rob  them  of  the  most  im- 
portant knowledge  that  can  be  imparted  to  them. 

When  the  Bishop  of  London  was  in  this  country,  he  came 
in  contact  with  some  of  our  good  men  and  women  who  were 
working  along  these  lines  of  teaching,  and  on  his  return  to 
London  began  to  arouse  his  people  in  regard  to  the  great 
danger  and  fearful  results  of  withholding  from  their  children 
the  proper  instructions.  The  Bishop  offered  to  place  himself 
at  the  head  of  a  great  moral  crusade,  the  like  of  which  has 
never  before  been  seen  in  England,  that  would  seek  mainly  to 
awaken  the  conscience  of  the  parenthood  of  England,  and 
point  out  to  every  father  and  mother  that  the  future  moral 
welfare  of  the  United  Kingdom  rested  in  doing  away  with 
the  present  false  modesty,  and  in  the  frank  and  honest  in- 
struction of  their  children. 

The  Bishop  said:  "I  am  now  convinced  that  the  uplift- 
ing of  the  morality  of  our  people  lies,  above  all  and  every- 
thing else,  in  educating  the  children,  rationally  and  morally. 
I  believe  that  more  evil  has  been  done  by  the  squeamishness 
of  parents  who  are  afraid  to  instruct  their  children  in  the 
vital  facts  of  life,  than  by  all  the  other  agencies  of  vice  put 
together.  I  am  determined  to  overcome  this  obstacle  to  our 
national  morality.  I  have  not  the  slightest  hesitation  in  say- 
ing that  the  right  way  has  been  found  at  last.    Thousands  of 


Instructions  to  the  Youth.  189 

men  have  asked  me  why  they  were  not  taught  the  danger  of 
vice  in  their  youth,  and  I  have  had  no  reply  to  make  to  them. 
I  intend  now,  with  God's  help,  to  remove  this  reproach  from 
our  land." 

"There  shall  be  plain  talking,"  says  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don; "the  time  has  gone  by  for  whispers  and  paraphrases. 
Boys  and  girls  must  be  told  what  these  great  vital  facts  of  life 
mean,  and  they  must  be  given  the  proper  knowledge  of  their 
bodies  and  the  proper  care  of  them.  No  abstractions:  the 
only  way  now  is  to  be  frank,  man  to  man." 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  go  into  a  lengthy  detail  of  just 
what  the  children  and  those  in  adolescence  age,  as  well  as 
older  ones  shall  be  taught,  but  rather  to  try  to  arouse  the 
parents  to  realize  the  necessity  of  such  teaching.  There  are 
plenty  of  books  meeting  the  entire  situation  that  can  be  se- 
cured. 

It  is  a  positive  fact  that  little  children  of  the  most  respect- 
able parents  are  indulging  in  sexual  relations  as  young  as 
six  years  of  age.  It  is  not  at  all  uncommon  for  many  of  them 
to  commit  this  awful  sin  at  eight  years  of  age,  and  those  ten 
years  old  indulging  is  alarmingly  large. 

They  do  not  understand  the  shame  and  wrong  of  it,  because 
no  one  has  taught  them  the  least  bit  in  regard  thereto.  Some 
impure  playmate  has  taught  them  that  by  the  act  pleasure 
can  be  created,  and  since  their  parents  have  never  warned 
them  of  the  wrong  and  danger,  they  easily  fall  into  the  habit, 
and  as  a  result  thousands  of  them  ruin  health ;  stunt  physical 
and  brain  power  and  become  moral  degenerates. 

Young  girls  often  become  mothers  because  they  do  not  un- 
derstand that  pregnancy  is  the  natural  result  of  sexual  indul- 
gence. Boys  in  knee  pants  become  fathers  for  the  same  reason. 
We  could  cite  cases  of  both  kinds. 


190  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

The  father  should  give  special  instructions  to  his  boys  at 
the  right  age,  telling  them  all  about  their  sexual  life  and 
warning  them  of  the  horrible  results  of  abuse  and  illicit  in- 
dulgence.   If  the  father  will  not,  then  the  mother  must. 

Boys  fourteen  and  sixteen  years  old  frequent  public 
brothels.  They  have  never  been  warned  against  these  things, 
thus  when  sexual  desire  becomes  strong,  they  are  easily  led 
by  low  companions  into  these  dens,  where  they  contract  dis- 
ease that  in  many  cases  causes  them  to  become  chronic  lepers, 
who  go  on  spreading  the  disease  as  long  as  they  live ;  and  in 
many  cases  after  offspring  has  been  brought  into  the  world, 
bearing  the  marks  of  their  father's  crime,  the  mother  must 
have  the  knife  applied,  and  give  up  a  good  share  of  her  body, 
as  further  propitiation  for  the  youthful  follies  and  sins  of  her 
husband. 

In  many  instances  this  is  all  due  to  the  fact  that  parents 
were  too  modest  (?)  or  indifferent  to  properly  teach  their 
children  in  regard  to  sex  life  and  sins.  Girls  are  allowed  to 
come  to  the  age  of  puberty  without  any  intimation  of  this 
great  change,  and  many  are  the  pitiful  results  of  this  neglect. 

The  good  father  is  intent  on  making  of  money  to  give  his 
wife  and  children  social  advantages  and  a  happy  home,  and 
is  too  busy  to  read  and  then  impart  his  knowledge  to  his  boys. 
The  mother  is  too  busy  with  tea  parties,  whist  and  the  dance 
to  spend  any  time  reading  books  that  will  give  her  knowledge 
along  these  lines.  She  often  considers  it  more  important  to 
have  her  daughter  well  dressed  and  out  in  society  than  to 
spend  a  few  quiet  hours  with  her  imparting  the  most  im- 
portant knowledge  that  she  is  ever  to  learn. 

It  is  a  horrible  fact  that  in  the  so-called  "Upper  Classes" 
of  people,  children  receive  very  little  more  attention  in  the 
matter  of  careful  training:  than  do  the  children  of  the  slums. 


Instructions  to  the  Youth.  191 

The  greatest  need  of  the  hour  is  the  arousement  of  the 
parents.  The  home  should  become  a  better  training  school 
than  it  now  appears  to  be.  We  would  suggest  that  parents 
be  more  interested  in  their  children  and  not  quite  so  much 
in  the  almighty  dollar.  Mothers  should  spend  more  time 
with  them,  talking  over  these  important  matters. 

They  should  know  where  the  children  are,  and  not  allow 
them  to  be  out  at  nights  alone,  girls  and  boys  playing  around 
in  dark  alleys  together.  "We  could  tell  you  of  some  terrible 
things  that  happen  in  these  alleys  at  night,  among  girls  and 
boys  from  eight  to  twelve  years  of  age.  Their  parents  sup- 
pose they  are  indulging  in  innocent  play ;  but  there  are  shock- 
ing things  going  on.  No  mother  who  wishes  to  keep  her  chil- 
dren free  from  vile  attacks  should  allow  her  children  to  be 
out  playing  around  out  of  her  sight  after  dark.  We  are 
speaking  from  positive  knowledge  and  beg  parents,  for  the 
sake  of  their  children  to  heed  the  warning.  We  wish  we 
could  cry  from  the  house-tops  so  all  would  hear;  spend  more 
time  in  the  home  with  your  children !  Keep  them  more  closely 
under  your  watchful  care !  Teach  them,  warn  them,  against 
sexual  vice! 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


A  Word  to  Girls. 

Will  the  girls  please  suffer  a  word  of  kind,  loving  advice? 

Oh,  how  many  girls,  as  well  as  boys,  get  into  trouble  because 
they  refuse  to  listen  to  advice. 

Don't  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  you  know  more  than 
your  good  fathers  and  mothers.  Remember,  they  are  older 
and  have  had  an  opportunity  to  see  the  results  of  wrong- 
doing. Some  of  them  have  suffered  themselves  and  are  speak- 
ing out  of  sore  experience. 

So  many  poor,  wretched  girls  are  outcasts,  white  slaves; 
and  some  are  taking  care  of  a  child  with  no  father  to  claim 
it,  because  they  thought  they  knew  what  was  best  for  them 
and  would  not  listen  to  older,  wiser  heads. 

The  other  day  a  very  pitiful  instance  was  brought  to  our 
notice :  A  girl  gave  birth  to  twins ;  she  had  no  clothes  to  put 
on  them  and  had  just  enough  money  for  a  week's  board.  A 
working  girl,  away  from  home,  and  among  strangers.  She 
had  once  been  a  member  of  the  church,  but  got  to  going  to 
dances;  fell  in  with  bad  company  and  slowly  drifted  away 
from  the  church  with  this  awful  result. 

Right  here  girls  let  me  remind  you  that,  as  some  of  these 
federal  officers  state,  the  dance  hall  is  just  where  many  of 
these  vile  men,  who  had  just  as  soon  ruin  you  as  to  look  at 
you,  hang  out.  There  are  very  few  girls  who  visit  the  public 
dance  hall,  that  do  not  in  the  end  come  to  grief. 

The  act  of  dancing  tends  to  excite  sexual  feeling,  and  no 
girl  who  wishes  to  make  sure  she  will  retain  her  virtue  should 

192 


A  Word  to  Girls.  193 

visit  these  public  traps  of  sin.  You  cannot  be  too  careful, 
dear  girls.  Do  not  be  afraid  that  if  you  are  dignified  and 
reserved  that  young  men  will  shun  you  and  you  may  be  de- 
stined to  be  an  old  maid. 

You  might  better  live  a  single  life  than  to  meet  the  fate 
which  comes  to  thousands  of  girls  every  year.  Remember  that 
the  worthy,  desirable  young  men,  who  will  make  good,  kind, 
clean  husbands,  are  not  looking  for  wild,  boisterous  girls,  who 
cheapen  themselves  by  making  free  with  young  men  of  low 
character.    Such  men  search  for  sweet,  modest,  dignified  girls. 

When  you  are  in  the  company  of  young  men  alone,  do  not 
allow  them  to  be  too  familiar  with  you  and  above  all  things 
do  not  permit  fondling  or  caressing. 

No  young  man  has  any  right  to  be  fondling  you,  unless  he 
is  bethrothed  to  you  to  become  your  lawful  husband ;  and  then 
let  me  warn  you  to  be  very  careful  not  to  allow  too  much 
freedom,  for  in  such  cases  as  that,  the  first  child  has  been 
born  too  soon  and  a  cloud  overshadows  the  life  of  the  mother 
forever. 

Remember  girls,  that  while  a  man  may  do  every  thing  that 
is  vile  and  mean,  and  reform  and  be  respected  and  accepted, 
a  woman  who  blackens  her  name  can  never  entirely  erase  the 
marks.  This  is  unfair  and  unjust,  but  somehow  it  is  an  es- 
tablished rule. 

Dancing,  card  playing,  low  theatres,  all  lead  to  bad  com- 
pany, impure  thoughts  and  desires.  To  do  these  things  is 
playing  with  fire  that  burns  out  the  virtue  from  the  lives  of 
the  majority  who  take  the  risk.  The  penalties  are  too  heavy 
for  any  dear,  sweet  girl  to  take  chances  on.  You  might  better 
endure  a  few  jeers  and  sneers,  if  need  be,  than  to  do  things 
and  associate  with  company  that  are  so  likely  to  sweep  you 
down  the  river  of  destruction  and  death. 


194  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

If  you  knew,  dear  girls,  how  young  men  discuss  loud,  bois- 
terous girls;  girls  who  indulge  in  coarse  jokes  and  impure  lan- 
guage, you  would  be  careful,  and  value  yourselves  a  little 
higher.  A  girl  should  never  allow  a  young  man  to  pass  jokes 
that  have  the  least  flavor  of  indecency.  These  things  are  often 
a  forerunner  to  greater  liberties.  A  girl  who  respects  herself 
and  has  the  right  idea  of  propriety  will  not  allow  it. 

Do  not  be  afraid  of  offending  a  young  man.  If  he  is  a 
true,  noble  character,  he  will  respect  you  all  the  more.  If 
he  is  a  vulgar,  unprincipled  wretch,  the  sooner  you  are  rid 
of  him  the  better.  Do  not  be  sitting  up  all  hours  of  the 
night  with  young  men  who  have  come  only  for  the  purpose  of 
having  a  fondling  time,  ready  to  coax  you  into  sexual  sin  at 
the  first  opportunity.  If  a  young  man  attempts  to  turn  the 
light  down,  turn  him  out.  No  young  man  who  respects  the 
girl  he  is  with,  or  has  good  intentions  toward  her  will  do 
such  a  thing;  and  a  girl  who  properly  respects  herself  will 
not  allow  it. 

If  a  man  will  not  call  unless  he  can  take  such  liberties,  you 
are  well  rid  of  him. 

These  are  plain  words;  every  one  true,  and  we  warn  you 
because  we  love  you  and  want  to  help  save  you,  if  possible, 
from  throwing  yourself  into  the  very  jaws  of  sin  and  destruc- 
tion. Thousands  of  girls  are  shut  up  in  prisons  and  reform 
schools  to-day  because  they  would  not  listen  to  the  warnings 
of  good  parents  and  kind  friends.  Many  thousands  more  art 
in  rescue  homes  caring  for  babes,  who  brought  their  grief 
upon  themselves  because  they  would  not  obey  their  parents 
and  do  what  was  right. 

You  cannot  play  with  fire  and  not  get  burned.  Keep  good 
company ;  avoid  places  where  vile  men  and  women  congregate. 


A  Word  to  Girls.  195 

Go  nowhere  except  to  the  places  good  parents  tell  you  are 
right. 

Another  word  of  caution.  Do  not  many  a  man  to  reform 
him.  There  is  only  one  case  in  many  thousands  that  works 
out  as  you  plan.  Have  nothing  to  do  with  young  men  who 
drink.  Demand  of  the  young  men  who  associate  with  you 
the  same  standard  of  purity  they  ask  of  you.  Stop  giving 
young  men  the  license  to  do  as  they  please  and  then  be  your 
close  companions  just  the  same. 

A  good,  decent,  respectable  young  man,  who  values  his  rep- 
utation and  character,  will  not  associate  in  any  way  with  a 
young  woman  of  questionable  character.  What  a  pity  it  is 
that  our  very  best  girls  do  not  follow  the  same  rule  in  their 
choice  of  the  young  men  they  go  with!  Why  do  you  value 
yourselves  less  than  young  men  value  themselves  ? 

Think  carefully  about  these  things,  girls,  and  you  will  be 
less  likely  to  go  astray,  or  come  to  grief.  You  will  be  more 
sure  to  avoid  breaking  the  heart  of  that  dear  mother  who  is 
laying  awake  nights  and  wetting  her  pillow  with  tears  because 
her  daughter  is  disobedient,  stubborn,  willful;  frequenting 
places  of  sin  and  keeping  low  company. 

These  words  come  from  a  heart  filled  with  love  and  pity 
for  you,  hoping  and  praying  that  under  the  blessing  of  God, 
they  may  save  some  poor  girls  from  the  rocks  of  destruction. 
Do  not  be  too  much  carried  away  with  the  love  of  dress.  De- 
sire for  costly  dresses  and  jewelry  has  lured  many  a  girl  to 
her  ruin  and  caused  thousands  to  be  easy  prey  for  these  White 
Slave  vultures.  A  working  girl  should  not  expect  to  dress  as 
well  as  daughters  of  men  who  are  receiving  a  salary  of  many 
thousands  of  dollars  a  year. 

You  will  be  much  more  respected  and  appreciated  if  you 
dress  becoming  to  your  station,  than  if  you  overdo  the  matter. 


196  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

Remember  good  people  are  watching  your  action  more  than 
your  clothes.  They  will  be  far  more  favorably  impressed  with 
you  if  you  dress  moderately,  instead  of  gaudily. 

Avoid  reading  trashy  literature.  Cultivate  a  desire  of 
high  ideals.  Be  willing  to  spend  a  few  sensible  moments 
learning  about  the  problems  of  life,  and  facing  its  realities, 
rather  than  to  be  wanting  every  moment  of  your  time  crowded 
with  fun.  You  will  have  to  face  these  things  sooner  or  later. 
Try  to  be  prepared  somewhat  for  these  problems  when  they 
come.  A  young  woman  should  always  make  an  endeavor  to 
fit  herself  for  the  responsibilities  of  wife  and  motherhood; 
then  when  the  duties  come,  it  will  not  be  so  difficult  to  meet 
them.  Follow  this  road  and  it  will  lead  you  to  health  and 
happiness  and  make  you  a  blessing  to  others. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


Advice  to  Young  Men. 

A  few  words  of  caution  to  young  men  may  not  be  altogether 
out  of  place  in  this  humble  book.  It  seems  really  more  ap- 
propriate for  a  man  to  advise  young  men,  yet  there  are  some 
things  to  be  said  from  a  woman 's  point  of  view. 

First  of  all,  what  we  have  said  to  the  young  women  along 
the  lives  of  purity  applies  to  young  men  as  well  as  women. 
Learn  about  yourselves,  your  physical  nature ;  especially  your 
sexual  life.  If  your  father  does  not  volunteer  to  give  you  the 
knowledge  you  ought  to  have,  ask  him  to  tell  you.  Avoid  sex- 
ual sins.  Keep  your  nature  under  control.  Shun  strong 
drink  as  you  would  the  most  poisonous  reptile  that  could 
clutch  your  throat. 

No  young  man  can  make  a  success  of  life  these  days  and 
drink  alcoholics;  especially  since  the  manufacturing  firms, 
railway  companies,  banks,  department  stores,  and  all  the  in- 
dustrial organizations  and  institutions  are  coming  to  put  in 
their  rules :  ' '  We  will  not  employ  men  who  drink  intoxicating 
liquors. ' ' 

The  use  of  these  beverages  will  stand  between  you  and 
some  desirable,  well-paying  position.  Thousands  of  men  who 
would  not  listen  to  advice,  but  allowed  themselves  to  be  ruined 
by  strong  drink,  have  said:  "Tell  the  young  men,  the  only 
safe  way  is  never  to  take  the  first  glass."  The  power  of  ap- 
petite for  liquor  is  peculiarly  strong  and  horrible.  No  young 
man  who  wishes  to  make  a  success  of  life  can  afford  to  tampei 
with  it.     It  would  be  a  good  thing  to  let  tobacco  alone  also. 

197 


198  The  Shame  of  a  Great  Nation. 

It  is  an  expensive  habit  and  does  no  good,  but  frequently 
great  harm.  While  it  cannot  quite  be  true  that  it  is  as  bad 
as  whiskey,  yet  it  is  bad  enough  and  many  are  the  physical 
and  mental  wrecks  due  to  its  use.  Anything  that  does  you  no 
good  had  best  be  let  alone.  Anything  that  means  thousands 
of  dollars  in  a  life  time,  especially  if  an  unnecessary  indul- 
gence, had  better  be  let  alone.  It  is  thought  by  many  of  our 
best  medical  and  scientific  men  that  the  use  of  it  often  leads 
to  drink. 

There  is  one  thing  which  particularly  burdens  our  hearts. 
It  is  the  way  young  men  take  advantage  of  a  girl's  love  and 
confidence,  or  her  weakness,  inducing  sexual  relations,  and 
then  when  there  is  offspring  as  a  result  of  it,  abandon  her  and 
leave  her  to  get  along  the  best  she  can. 

There  is  no  punishment  too  great  for  a  young  man  who 
persuaded  a  good  decent  girl  to  give  him  her  virtue,  and  then 
desert  her.  He  might  far  better  go  to  the  women  who  are 
willing  to  sell  their  virtue  as  common  merchandise,  than  to 
cast  a  cloud  of  shame  over  the  life  of  some  innocent,  sweet 
girl.  Men  who  have  been  guilty  of  this  vile  deed  have  some- 
times had  the  experience  of  knowing  how  it  feels  to  have  some 
other  unprincipled  fellow  play  the  same  dirty  trick  on  a  sis- 
ter. Just  as  you  felt  like  beating  the  life  out  of  him,  so  others 
have  felt  like  giving  you  the  same  punishment. 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  conceive  a  meaner  man  than  those 
who  ruin  and  then  desert  girls.  They  should  be  classed  along 
with  the  "white  slave  traders."  One  has  no  more  principle 
than  the  other. 

A  good  rule  to  follow  is,  treat  every  other  girl  and  woman 
as  you  would  like  to  have  other  men  treat  your  mother  and 
sisters.  When  you  find  you  are  becoming  tempted  in  tlit 
presence  of  women  beyond  self-control,  go  away  for  the  time, 


Advice  to  Young  Men.  199 

until  conditions  are  suppressed  which  would  cause  you  to 
persuade  a  girl  to  do  wrong  to  give  you  a  moment's  pleasure. 
If  you  are  so  unfortunate  as  to  make  the  mistake  then  be 
man  enough  to  stay  by  the  girl  and  help  bear  the  shame  and 
responsibility.  The  world  will  respect  you  for  it,  and  God 
will  bless  you  in  return  for  your  noble  manliness. 

In  all  ways  strive  after  the  good  and  shun  the  wrong.  Re- 
sist each  temptation  as  it  comes;  keep  away  from  saloons, 
gambling  dens  and  brothels.  Remember  that,  "Whatsoever 
a  man  soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap."  You  can  not  go  out 
to  "sow  wild  oats"  without  reaping  a  harvest  that  will  cause 
you  pain  and  sorrow  and  great  loss  in  many  ways.  Be  true 
and  good  at  any  cost,  and  the  rewards  will  well  pay  you  for 
the  sacrifices,  if  it  is  really  proper  to  call  acts  of  manly  re- 
sistance of  wrong  sacrifices. 

May  God  bless  our  young  men,  and  cause  every  one  who 
reads  these  words  to  be  inspired  with  noble  purposes.  May 
every  such  one  be  determined  to  reach  the  heights  of  true 
manliness,  and  so  live  that  there  may  not  be  a  man  or  woman 
he  is  ashamed  to  look  in  the  face,  because  of  some  great  wrong 
done  them  for  his  own  pleasure  and  benefit. 


"We  earnestly  beseech  every  reader  of  this  book  to  try  to  get 
it  into  as  many  homes  as  possible.  By  doing  so  you  will  help 
the  cause,  and  save  many  a  girl  from  ruin. 

Let  all  who  can  do  so,  kindly  send  a  contribution  for  the 
work.  Remit  to  Mrs.  E.  N.  Law,  State  Supt.  of  the  work  for 
Pennsylvania,  appointed  by  the  American  Purity  Federation. 
Address,  Mrs.  Law,  37  Hayne  Ave.,  Detroit,  Mich. 


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